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Inspiration: Bill Brandt

03.09.22 10:41 PM By The Camera Club

A British photographer and photojournalist

From Wikipedia: Bill Brandt (born Hermann Wilhelm Brandt; 2 May 1904 – 20 December 1983) 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.


An archive of his work can be found at the official archive: https://www.billbrandt.com/

His profile and various works owned by Moma can be found at https://www.moma.org/artists/740

The V&A hold many of his works and have an introduction to his work found at The V&A Collections

Nude, Baie des Anges, France, 1959

While walking the beaches of northwest France, Brand became aware of the smooth, rounded forms of the beach rocks and how they resembled the human body. Brandt went on to produce many more images like this and became part of a signature set.


Photograph: Bill Brandt Archive

Cuckmere River, Sussex, 1963

Brandt experimented with different angles and shapes to produce more abstract images, he did this with both bodyscape and landscape images.


Photograph: Bill Brandt Archive

East End girl dancing the Lambeth Walk, 1939

"The Lambeth Walk" is a song from the 1937 musical 'Me and My Girl'. The song takes its name from a local street once notable for its street market and working-class culture in Lambeth, an area of London, England.                


Photograph: Bill Brandt Archive

Francis Bacon on Primrose Hill, London, 1963

According to Brandt’s biographer, Paul Delany, Bacon didn’t enjoy the process of being photographed by Brandt, and he hated the picture. The picture was taken in 1963, the jaunty commercial era of Pop Art, and the landmark year in popular culture of the Beatles’ first LP. Yet the portrait’s somber mood, entirely in keeping with Brandt’s earlier high-contrast photographs, feels more like a product of the late 1940s or 1950s.


Photograph: Bill Brandt Archive

East Durham coal searchers, 1937

Coal searchers were people who would sift through the giant slag heaps outside industrial sites in order to find small remnants of coal. They would spend hours sifting through in order to create enough to sell on, or use for fuel at home.
This view of pre-WW2 England was typical of his work at the time and established him as a social documentarian and laid the ground for him more abstract work in the 40s.


Photograph: Bill Brandt Archive

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