About The Artist

Bill Brandt (Born in 1904 in Hamburg, died in 1983 in London)

Alongside Roger Fenton, one of the most important British photographers. Brandt was born in Hamburg to an English father and a German mother. He contracted tuberculosis at an early age and spent the years between 1924 and 1927 in a sanatorium in Switzerland. From there he traveled to Vienna where to took up photography. In 1929 Brandt moved to Paris where he assisted Man Ray in his studio. Brandt was never officially a Surrealist but he did absorb influences from the movement, and he would blend those influences with pictorialism and documentary photography to create a unique, personal vision.
Brandt settled in London in 1931 and began documenting all levels of British society for a project called “The English at Home”, published as a book in 1936, followed two years later by another book, “A Night in London”.
During the 1930’s and 1940’s did a series of important stories for magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Picture Post and Liliput, documenting the industrial cities and coal mining districts of northern England. To mark the arrival of peace in 1945, Brandt began his much celebrated series of nudes.

Brandt photographed upper class houses in Mayfair 1936, contrasting “upstairs and downstairs”, the leisurely life of the wealthy owners with that of their servants.