This Week in Photography History: The Death of Bill Brandt

Bill Brandt (May 2, 1904 – December 20, 1983) was a German-born, British Photographer / Photojournalist known for his portrayal of British society (street photography) as well as his dramatically distorted nudes and landscapes. He was widely regarded as one of the most important British photographers of the 20th century. During the early 1930s Brandt began to document British life in photographs, something that was never really done before. You could call this the pre-cursor to modern Street Photography. He was also a regular contributor to magazines such as Lilliput, Picture Post and Harper’s Bazaar, and was even comissioned by the Ministry of Information to document the underground bomb shelters used during The Blitz in 1940.

East End girl dancing the Lambeth Walk.

Later in his career became rather well known for his dramatic landscapes and artistic nudes (feel free to look those up on your own), and made use of wide angle lenses to intentionally create distortion in his images. He also favored a very high contrast output in his work.

In the end, he passed away in London in 1983 after a short illness. He earned his status as one of Britain’s most celebrated and admired photographers of the 20th century. If you would like some more information on Brandt, you can check out these links, as well as his books, of which Literary Britain (1951) and Shadow of Light (1966) are the most popular.

I will leave you with a few more images, and I encourage you to look up the work of Bill Brandt and get inspired!

Citations:

All images used in this article are ©Bill Brandt and belong to his estate.

Information for this article cited from Wikipedia, available to review here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Brandt

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Tagged as: 20th Century, Bill Brandt, Deceased, English, History, photographer

Max

Better take this page down. Copyright infringement.
- Matt
  
  As this is a review / retrospective of Bill Brandt’s life and work the images used would be considered ‘Fair Use’ of a copyrighted material.
  
  have a read of this: http://www.photoattorney.com/?p=299
  - Max
    
    Is this a commercial use? Yes .. There is advertising on the page. Therefore you may be forced to pay up.
adrian callaghan

Let’s be honest, 90% of people probably don’t even know who Bill Brandt is. So by given his work some exposure ( excuse the pun) with a link to the Bill Brandt estate , I’m sure they wont mind. Apart from that it’s good to see his work, don’t think I’ve looked at his stuff since my college days, circa mid 1990s. Always liked Paul Strand’s work too.