3. Born Hamburg,
Germany. 2 May 1904
Took up photography
when recovering from
tuberculosis in
Switzerland
Bill Brandt
Water colour, Bill Brandt, 1918
4. Moved to Vienna
where he met Ezra
Pound and Man Ray.
Bill Brandt
Ezra Pound and Man Ray
5. 1920’s moved to
Paris.
Experimented with
surrealist
photography being
greatly influenced by
Eugene Atget.
Bill Brandt
Flea Market. Bill Brandt.
6. Became noted for his
night photography.
Started using family
and friends as models
in his photographs.
Bill Brandt
Woman in Hamburg, St. Pauli District, Bill Brandt, 1933
7. 1934 moved to
London and adopted
Britain as home to
escape the rise of
fascism in Europe
Bill Brandt
Flower seller Swiss Cottage. Bill Brandt
32. Showed difference between
social/economic levels
Lilliput and Picture Post also
campaigned for better social
conditions.
Brandt’s use of friends as models
to ‘set up’ shots.
Bill Brandt
Bill Brandt
33. Showed difference between
social/economic levels
Lilliput and Picture Post also
campaigned for better social
conditions.
Brandt’s use of friends as models
to ‘set up’ shots.
Could Brandt be trusted to show
the ‘truth’?
Bill Brandt
Bill Brandt
34. Showed difference between
social/economic levels
Lilliput and Picture Post also
campaigned for better social
conditions.
Brandt’s use of friends as models
to ‘set up’ shots.
Could Brandt be trusted to show
the ‘truth’?
What is truth?
Bill Brandt
Bill Brandt
35. Showed difference between
social/economic levels
Lilliput and Picture Post also
campaigned for better social
conditions.
Brandt’s use of friends as models
to ‘set up’ shots.
Could Brandt be trusted to show
the ‘truth’?
What is truth?
Does it matter?
Bill Brandt
Bill Brandt
36. Showed difference between
social/economic levels
Lilliput and Picture Post also
campaigned for better social
conditions.
Brandt’s use of friends as models
to ‘set up’ shots.
Could Brandt be trusted to show
the ‘truth’?
What is truth?
Does it matter?
The camera never lies!
Bill Brandt
Bill Brandt
Notes de l'éditeur
born in Hamburg on 2 May 1904 to an English father and a German mother
took up photography as an amateur enthusiast when he was a patient undergoing treatment for tuberculosis in a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland in the 1920s.
Moved to Vienna, job in portrait studio. Became friends with Ezra Pound (poet) and Man Ray. Both influence brands. Ezra Pound for his literature and poetry which was to feature predominantly later in his life. And Man Ray for his surrealist art.
1920s moved to Paris, Supported by Man Ray and other Surrealists as a major photographer in his own right. Early photographs are modeled on the works by the French photographer Eugène Atget (1857-1927).In the photograph Flea Market Brandt reworks a favourite Atget subject.
Night photography became one of Brandt's specialties and this may be his earliest experiment in the genre. Here he posed his first wife Eva Boros as a nightwalker in the red light district of Hamburg.
Brandt visited England during the late 1920s. In 1934 he and his wife settled in Belsize Park, north London. Brandt adopted Britain as his home and it became the subject of his greatest photographs.
The majority of Brandt's earliest English photographs were first published in Brandt’s The English at Home (1936).
Although he occasionally worked for a few London based magazine he was not in demand as a photojournalist until the foundation of Lilliput in 1937 and picture post in 1938.
The young photographer used his family contacts - for example, his banker uncles - to gain access to a variety of subjects and locations.
Brandt's second book, A Night in London, was published in London and Paris in 1938.
The book tells the story of a London night, moving between different social classes and making use – as with The English at Home – of Brandt's family and friends.
One of the main problems with working with Brandts photographs were how many were posed by friends and how many were ‘real’? However never forget that Brandt at the time was a working photojournalist.
Brandt would use the darkroom to create special effects. For example the photograph of the policeman was actually taken in daylight and made to look like nighttime in the darkroom.
Night photography was a new genre of the period due to the development of the flashbulb. However grants preferred to use portable tungsten lamps called photofloods and would often have long cables trailing the streets so the good places lighting in exactly the right position
Spurred by the Jarrow Crusade of 1936 and reading George Orwell's essays and J.B. Priestley's book An English Journey (1934), Brandt visited the industrial north of England for the first time in 1937.
No miner would be allowed in the home in their working clothes let alone sit down to eat. Another example of Brandts choreographed images.
Can we trust Brandt?
Coal-searcher Going Home to Jarrow eloquently captured the Depression. It was published in Picture Post ten years later to symbolize a very different time - the onset of the post-war 'Age of Austerity.'
Brandt started working for both Lillyput and Picture Post magazines, two of the most important and influential magazines of the time.
In 1939, at the beginning of the war, Brandt was photographing London in the blackout. Lit only by moonlight he produced perhaps some of his best work.
The blackout photographs, probably Brandt's own idea, were made during the 'phony war' period, after war had been declared but before serious hostilities between Britain and Germany had begun. A second set was made in 1942.
He was given a great deal of editorial freedom by his friend Tom Hopkinson who was editor of the magazines. Hopkinson later founded the Centre for Journalism Studies at University College in Cardiff, Wales,
His photographs were sent to Washington as part of the British government's attempt to bring the US into the war.
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From 1945 onwards Brandt contributed a series of landscape photographs, accompanied by texts selected from British writers, to Lilliput and Picture Post. Many of these were to accompany a series of literary pieces written by contemporary writers
.
It was here that Brandt’s literary contacts and understanding of literature proved invaluable.
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Although Brandt's career began, decisively, with his close-up portrait of Ezra Pound in 1928, portraiture flowered in his career only in the 1940s.
He used a Rolleiflex (introduced in 1928): its ground glass provided a clear view of the subject and the 2 ¼ x 2 ¼ inch negative gave Brandt the latitude he liked for darkroom work, especially cropping.
.
In the 1960s Brandt used a Hasselblad with a super wide-angle lens, which gave his portraits a dynamic edge appropriate to the new decade.
.
This was not the first time Brandt had used super wide angle lenses. The Nude series which he experimented with during the 1930s and early 40s were also made with wide angle lenses. In fact produced on a camera designed for Police scene of crime records.
The nudes reveal Brandt's intimate knowledge of the styles of - Man Ray, Picasso, Matisse and Arp - together with his admiration for the sculptor Henry Moore.
Brandt's last years were spent reissuing his work in a series of books published by Gordon Fraser. He taught photography at the Royal College of Art and accepted commissions for portraits.
Brandt died after a short illness in 1983 whilst working on his latest exhibition Literary Britain which became a memorial tribute the following year.
In 2004 the V&A produced the exhibition, Bill Brandt: A Centenary Retrospective