Bill Brandt: Portraits

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Although he never met Brandt, the novelist Lawrence Durrell attempted to persuade the leading poetry publishers, Faber & Faber, to publish Brandt’s landscapes. In 1950 Cassell commissioned Brandt to complete the series, which was published the following year with an introduction by John Hayward. Brandt greatly admired Edward Weston: the deep shadows and simplified, rhythmic forms of Brandt’s landscapes may owe something to the Californian master. In this charismatic portrait of one of Britain's premier figurative painters, Francis Bacon stands, visible from the waist-up, at the bottom-left quarter of the image. His brow furrowed, Bacon looks downward, past the camera to the left. Behind him, an expansive grassy park is visible, dotted with autumnal trees. The twilight sky is cloudy and moody, and a tall, illuminated streetlight stands behind Bacon, just to the left of a footpath visible on the right edge of the photo. a b Buggins, Joanne (1989). "An appreciartion of the shelter photographs taken by Bill Brandt in November 1940". Imperial War Museum Review. 4: 32–42. Brandt’s use of a wide-angle lens is another very striking feature of his innovative photographic practice. He initially intended to use this type of lens to photograph large and great ceilings, but later realized that it also distorts subjects up close, noting that he had “never planned that.” Although this was a new discovery for Brandt, it soon became almost his signature aesthetic, and is especially evident in his nudes. Placing the camera very close to his subjects, the wide angle enlarges the foreground to a great degree, making body parts look highly disproportionate. Prime examples of these are found in “Campden Hill, August 1953” and “Hampstead, London, 1952” —in the latter, the subject’s feet are so distorted that they hide the rest of her body. This wide-angle technique gives many of Brandt’s nudes a highly surreal quality, in which the human body expands and warps into bizarre forms. Brandt’s work is thus particularly subversive given the history of the nude in art, which had long privileged proportion and symmetry.

Jay, Bill and Nigel Warburton. Brandt: The Photography of Bill Brandt. London: Thames and Hudson, 1999. The Museum of Modern Art has taken on the task of distilling Brandt's lifetime oeuvre into a comprehensive retrospective, which opened Wednesday. The exhibition's catalog describes him as "the artist who defined the potential of photographic modernism in England for much of the twentieth century." 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. After several years of working on the project, he published his first book, The English at Homein 1936.

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Perspective of Nudes. Preface by Lawrence Durrell, introduction by Chapman Mortimer. London: The Bodley Head/New York: Amphoto, 1961. Brandt assisted Man Ray in Paris for several months in 1930. Here he witnessed the heyday of Surrealist film and grasped the new poetic possibilities of photography.

Elizabeth Bowen, one of Brandt’s favourite writers, wrote in her story 'Mysterious Kôr': 'Full moon drenched the city and searched it; there was not a niche left to stand in. The effect was remorseless: London looked like the moon's capital – shallow, cratered, extinct…And the moon did more: it exonerated and beautified'. For his photojournalism and portrait work, Brandt used a Rolleiflex. From the 1950s, he used a Hasselblad with a Zeiss Biogon 38mm super wide-angle lens for his landscape and nude photography. Bill Brandt met Tom Hopkinson, then assistant editor of Weekly Illustrated, in 1936. Hopkinson, later knighted for services to journalism, became Brandt's editor at Lilliput and Picture Post. He described Brandt in a profile published in Lilliput in 1942 as having 'a voice as loud as a moth and the gentlest manner to be found outside a nunnery'. Brandt would propose picture-stories for both magazines and often sequence his photo-essays, sometimes also contributing text. It is the result that counts, no matter how it was achieved. I find the darkroom work most important, as I can finish the composition of a picture only under the enlarger. I do not understand why this is supposed to interfere with the truth. Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others. Bill Brandt The PrintThese were not the first Brandt works to be acquired by the V&A. Up until 1977, photographs at the V&A were acquired by the National Art Library as models and research material for 'all variety of workers'. At the time, denied a place within the Museum's curatorial departments, modern photographs made their way into the collection through the Circulation department which provided loan exhibitions to regional museums and colleges throughout the UK. It was through the Circulation department that the first Brandt acquisition of twenty-six nudes was made by the Museum in 1964. This was followed in 1975 by twelve works chosen by Curator Mark Haworth-Booth and included in the touring exhibition 'The Land' which were shown along with Brandt's own selection. In 1977, photographs acquired by the Library and Circulation departments were formally transferred to the newly formed photographs section and all the Brandt photographs were consolidated within the same department. Brandt had his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1969. His work has since been the subject of major retrospectives in both the UK and abroad.

Bill Brandt: Portraits. Introduction by Alan Ross. London: G. Fraser/Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982. His photography is held in several public collections, including the Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum. 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. Brandt spent his remaining years reissuing his work in a series of books and teaching photography at the Royal College of Art. 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).In 1977, Brandt began a second series of nudes, which appeared along with some earlier photographs in the book Nudes 1945-1980(1981). When you have done everything inside you, you cannot carry on unless you repeat yourself, and that’s not very interesting. Bill Brandt His witty pictures of social life in London during the 1930s and his compassionate photographs during the depression are some of his most memorable images. In 1984, Bill Brandt was posthumously inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum. [5] Blue plaque, 4 Airlie Gardens His early work featured naked models in domestic interiors and on the beaches of East Sussex and northern and southern France. While his later, more experimental and abstract nude work, was shot mainly in the Mediterranean. Portrait Photography

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. Bill Brandt: A Retrospective Exhibition, Royal Photographic Society/National Centre of Photography, Bath Brandt’s portraiture developed in the 1940s, often commissioned by publications such as Lilliput, Picture Post and Harper’s Bazaar, and frequently depicted leading artists, writers and figures from the worlds of film and theatre. Pablo Picasso at ‘La Californie’, 1955 1955 (Tate P15009) is among Brandt’s best-known portraits. One of a series of portraits taken at Picasso’s villa ‘La Californie’ on the Côte d’Azur in the south of France, it was commissioned by Harper’s Bazaar. Georges Braque on the Beach at Varengeville, Normandy, 1955 1955 (Tate P15018) depicts the artist at the age of seventy-three. Braque is one of several sitters who Brandt photographed twice, with up to several decades between. Brandt had first shot Braque at the age of fifty-four in 1936. When Brandt collected his portraits into a book in 1982, he included seven people whom he had photographed at different stages of their lives, including Braque. Louise Nevelson’s Eye, 1963 1963 (Tate P14998) is a close-up image of the eye of American artist Louise Nevelson (1899–1988). Brandt made ten similar photographs in the early 1960s; each is the closely cropped eye of a notable artist. While some appear to have been made during the same session as a published portrait, none are thought to be enlargements from a known work. Brandt, Bill with introductions by Cyril Connolly and Mark Haworth-Booth. Shadow of Light, revised and extended edition. London: Gordon Fraser, 1977, pl.101. 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.

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In 2010, an English Heritage blue plaque for Brandt was erected in London at 4 Airlie Gardens, Kensington, W8. [6] Exhibitions [ edit ] Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you. However, it was Brandt's commissions from the magazine Lilliput that first established him as a portraitist of note, specialising in writers and artists. The first portfolio, Young Poets of Democracy, was accompanied by text by Stephen Spender and included studies of Dylan Thomas, Cecil Day-Lewis, William Empson and Robert Graves. Other series focused on composers, film directors and novelists whilst Brandt's work also appeared regularly in Harper's Bazaar. 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.