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BIOGRAPHIES
BRANDT, BILL
Germany, 1904-1983
Born in Hamburg of parents who were both partly
of Russian descent, Bill Brandt spent his early life in Germany
in delicate health. He left a Swiss tuberculosis sanitarium
in 1929 to study with the surrealist Man Ray in Paris. Brandt
worked closely with Man Ray in his studio for three months
and continued to see him regularly for the next two years.
He learned the value of experiment for its own sake and was
profoundly influenced by the surrealist work of Man Ray and
his circle.
After working freelance for Paris Magazine in 1930, Brandt
returned to England where he photographed for magazines such
as Lilliput, Harper's Bazaar, and News Chronicle for which
he documented the conditions of England in the depths of the
Depression. He photographed English middle- and upper-class
life both before and during World War II, publishing The English
at Home (1936), A Night in London (1938), and The Camera in
London (1948). Working as a photojournalist on assignment,
his photography was a singular and idiosyncratic mixture of
straight reportage with a consistent, if subtle, streak of
strangeness - the legacy of surrealism.
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Brandt lost interest in reportage toward the end of the war, and the
expressionism and surrealism of his work was accordingly strengthened.
He worked extensively with the nude, often with both perspective and
figural distortions. Also important in his work were portraits of
writers and artists, and ominous brooding landscapes and seashores
of the British Isles. Threatening skies at dawn and twilight and shadowed
interiors were characteristic subjects. Typical, too, were wide-angle,
distorting photographs, often strangely lighted and printed for high
contrast with the elimination of middle tones. Highly respected for
the intensity and power of his images, Brandt is considered one of
the pre-eminent photographers to have emerged in England. Writing
of his work, which runs clearly counter to the dominant post-war style
of straight, unmanipulated photography, Brandt has said, "Photography
is still a very new medium and everything must be tried and dare...
photography has no rules. It is not a sport. It is the result which
counts, no matter how it is achieved
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