Bill Brandt

Bill Brandt (born Hermann Wilhelm Brandt on May 3, 1904 in Hamburg , † December 20, 1983 in London ) was a British photographer of German origin.

Life

Hermann Wilhelm Brandt, already called Bill as a child, was born in Hamburg as the second son of the British merchant Louis Brandt (his mother came from the German-Russian merchant family of Austria based in St. Petersburg). His older brother Walter later became the head of the family-owned London private bank William Brandt & Co and his younger brother Rolf also lived as a painter in London. The family had completely returned to England out of conviction at the beginning of National Socialism. But everyone kept in touch with the von Oesterreich family, who have since also resided in Hamburg, and whose most prominent representatives are the actor, author and director Axel von Ambesser . As a young man, Bill Brandt was in poor health and came to London for the first time in 1931 after staying in a sanatorium in Davos via Vienna and Paris . (Later he had nothing against the rumor that he was a native of London.) In Paris he met the surrealist circle around Man Ray - probably through the poet Ezra Pound . In the UK he worked as a photographer and photojournalist for various magazines, including Lilliput and Harper's Bazaar ; The main focus of his topics were the living conditions in England during the Great Depression . From 1936 on, Brandt also published various illustrated books. In 1937 he went on a photo trip to the slums of the Midlands at his own expense . During the Second World War he worked for the home office .

After the end of the war he gave up his photojournalistic activity and turned to artistic landscape , portrait and nude photography . In the last years of his life he taught at the Royal College of Art and organized and supervised photo exhibitions.

Bill Brandt married Eva Szerena Maria von Zelenei on April 15, 1932 (born April 10, 1908). On July 30, 1959 he married Szikra Boros (born December 4, 1911), this marriage was divorced. His third wife Dorothy Anne Leznover (born February 21, 1916) he married on December 21, 1972, this marriage was also divorced.

plant

Brandt's works are never naturalistic ; he always brought alienating elements into the report . His treatment of light and shadow and the choice of unusual perspectives are characteristic - also in documentary recordings for the home office. In this way he combined the sobriety of the socially committed photographer with the fantastic unreality of the expressionist . Nonetheless, he clearly showed his contemporaries a country divided into social castes .

Inspired by his friend Brassaï , he studied night shots in detail .

His nudes later attracted worldwide attention: in the series Distorsions , parts of the female body were transformed into - often abstract - graphic forms. He succeeded in doing the same with landscape shots. Snapshots weren't his thing; rather, he immersed himself in his task with great patience.

Brandt was influenced by Eugène Atget , Man Ray , Brassaï, André Kertész and Edward Weston , but made his own distinctive contribution to the development of photography: to reveal the poetic, even mythical reason behind the phenomena .

Quote

"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."

“When I've found a landscape that I want to photograph, I wait for the right season, the right weather, the right time of day or night to get the picture that I know is here today is. "

Works

• Behind the camera. Photographs 1928-1983 , Aperture Press, New York, 1985, ISBN 0-89381-181-5
• The camera in London , Focal Press, London 1948
• The English at Home. 63 photographs , Batsford Verlag, London 1936
• Literary Britain , Hurtwood Press, London 1984, ISBN 0-905209-66-4
• A Night in London , 1938
• Nudes. 1945-1980 , Fraser, London 1982, ISBN 0-86092-051-8
• Perspective of Nudes , Bodley Heat, London 1961

literature

• Paul Delaney: Bill Brandt. A life , Cape, London 2004, ISBN 0-224-05280-2
• Leo F. Gruber (Ed.): Great Photographers of our Century , Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1964, p. 110 ff.
• Nigel Warburton (Ed.): Bill Brandt, selected texts and bibliography , Clio Press, Oxford 1993, ISBN 1-85109-206-4

Web link

• Official site of the Bill-Brandt Archive