Bill Brandt: Portraits

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He decided to pursue a career in photojournalism, a profession still in its infancy. However, Brandt was a photojournalist with a difference. For under the tutelage of Man Ray, Brandt had developed his own moody, surreal style. Some early photographs are modelled on works by the French photographer Eugène Atget (1857-1927). Atget made a living selling his photographs, mainly of old Paris, to painters, designers and libraries. In the 1920s he was taken up by Man Ray and other Surrealists as a major photographer in his own right. Author of The Young Visitors, a children’s classic, written when she was nine, but not published until 1919 Bill Brandt (born Hermann Wilhelm Brandt; 2 May 1904 – 20 December 1983) [1] :14 was a British photographer and photojournalist. Born in Germany, Brandt moved to England, where he became known for his images of British society for such magazines as Lilliput and Picture Post; later he made distorted nudes, portraits of famous artists and landscapes. He is widely considered to be one of the most important British photographers of the 20th century. [1] Life and work [ edit ] Photograph of a North London air raid shelter taken by Brandt in 1940

When I have found a landscape which I want to photograph, I wait for the right season, the right weather, and the right time of day or night, to get the picture which I know to be there.'Although there was little direct teaching from Man Ray, Brandt was able to absorb the new developments in photography and various art movements in Paris.

Prints of the catalogue numbers 1 to 92 were made under the photographer’s supervision especially for the exhibition. The following vintage prints date from the time when the photographs were taken. I photographed pubs, common lodging houses at night, theatres, Turkish baths, prisons and people in their bedrooms. London has changed so much that some of these pictures now have a period charm almost of another century.' To celebrate the centenary of his birth, this display is the first chance in twenty years to see a remarkable collection of great photographic portraits by legendary photographer Bill Brandt (1904 - 1983). This display complements the major exhibition being mounted by the Victoria and Albert Museum - Bill Brandt: A Centenary Retrospective (24 March -25 July 2004).Brandt's last years were spent reissuing his work in a series of books published by Gordon Fraser. He taught Royal College of Art photography students and continued to accept commissions for portraits. He selected an exhibition for the Victoria and Albert Museum titled ‘The Land: 20th Century Landscape Photographs’ (1975) and was working on another show, 'Bill Brandt’s Literary Britain', when he died after a short illness in 1983. Feeling frustrated by modern cameras and lenses which seemed designed to imitate human vision and conventional sight, I was looking everywhere for a camera with a very wide angle. One day in a second hand shop, near Covent Garden, I found a 70-year-old wooden Kodak. I was delighted. Like nineteenth-century cameras it had no shutter, and the wide-angle lens, with an aperture as minute as a pinhole, was focused on infinity. Bill Brandt There have been important Brandt acquisitions since then, including eight vintage prints donated by Bill Brandt himself in 1980. Brandt disliked his muted earlier (vintage) prints but, as the Museum asked for them for the benefit of photography students, graciously gave examples. These included such photographs as 'Gull’s Nest, Isle of Skye',1947. While he pursued several subjects throughout his lifetime, Brandt tended to focus on one genre for an extended period before moving on to the next one. Martin Gasser, "Bill Brandt in Switzerland and Austria: Shadows of Life". In: History of Photography, Winter 1997.

After being sent to Vienna for lung analysis in 1927 he met the Austrian writer, Dr. Eugenie Schwarzwald. She suggested that he should pursue a career in photography. Photography Career Perspective of Nudes. Preface by Lawrence Durrell, introduction by Chapman Mortimer. London: The Bodley Head/New York: Amphoto, 1961. Brandt followed her advice and secured an apprenticeship with the Austrian photographer Grete Kolliner. Today Tate Britain opens a free exhibition dedicated to celebrated British photographer Bill Brandt (1904-83). 44 original photographs from across his career are displayed alongside the magazines and photobooks in which these images were most often seen. Entitled Bill Brandt: Inside the Mirror, this is Tate’s first Brandt exhibition. It reveals the secrets of his artistry and the fascinating ways he staged and refined his photographs. Drawn from Tate’s collection, the show includes many recent acquisitions which reflect Tate’s ongoing commitment to strengthening its holdings of photography. Photographs by Bill Brandt. Introduction by Mark Haworth-Booth. Washington DC: International Exhibitions Foundation, 1980.Brandt's first one-man show in the United States was at Eastman House in Rochester, New York, in 1963, and was followed by a full retrospective at MoMA, New York, in 1969. MoMA introduced him in its catalogue as "the artist who defined the potential of photographic modernism in England for much of the twentieth century". In his last years, Brandt's output was however largely restricted to commissioned portraits and a teaching post at London's Royal College of Art (which had awarded him an honorary doctorate). Brandt (like Moore) had also experimented with assemblages formed of found objects. These were published in 1993 as Bill Brandt: The Assemblages. Brandt, Bill with introductions by Cyril Connolly and Mark Haworth-Booth. Shadow of Light, revised and extended edition. London: Gordon Fraser, 1977, pl.101. Art historians Martina Droth and Paul Messier cite Stonehenge under Snow as a "turning point" in Brandt's career, when he "moved away from the socio-political images of depression-era and wartime Britain and became focused on a more subjective engagement with the landscape and the body". They add that "While capturing a newsworthy moment in time, the image also represents a timeless view of a mythic ancient symbol of the nation. Its artful and elegiac composition points to Brandt's interest in strong contrast, silhouette, and the use of large expanses of the picture space where visual detail is reduced to almost nothing".