Bill Brandt.

From my notes over the summer:

He used a police camera which is not usually used to take nudes.
He studied under Man Ray.
emphasize or morph the nude figure-- abstraction.
Human
Rock/driftwood-- makes her more a part of nature.
Enegmatic
Henry Moore-- the most important English Sculptor at the time.
Picasso
     when you're so close to someone that your eyes can't focus in the traditional way-- binocular.
Steiglitz and Steichen
   The Family of Man
   We're all the same family. together.
    Defined an era of peace- optimistic.
    Reassures us that most of us are good.

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From the text:

Brandt, Britain's best-known photographer of the postwar years, was a unique phenomenon. He had been involved with Surrealism through his association with Man Ray in the 1920s and with the documentation of contrasts among the classes in the 1930s, which he collected in his first publication, The English at Home (1936). Brandt's portraits, landscapes, and nude studies made after the war encompass a variety of different approaches. In the search for what he termed "something beyond real," he found that optic distortions-- the result of using an extremely wide-angle lens and a very small aperture-- produced a curious yet poetic landscape in which human form and nature merged. This particular approach has attracted relatively few followers in his native country, but Brandt's emphasis on capturing inner realities through the imaginative use of light insprired the work of Paul Hill, whose affinity to the mysicism of Minor White is also apparent in Arrow and Puddle, Ashbourne Car Park.

Bill Brandt,  Nude, East Sussex Coast, 1953.

 

Paul Hill, Arrow and Puddle, Ashbourne Car Park, 1974.

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More Bill Brandt:

He just  knocks on this family's door and says do you mind if i make a few photographs?

Why, yes, of course. 

Bill Jay Ouija (Weegee)

Extension

elongation

Morphing the figure into a landscape within a domestic scene.

Soho Bedroom, 1938

I enjoy the broken up spaces-- it allows for subtlety to appear through the lighter areas. 

I always enjoy his use of high contrast.

The loss of insignificant details makes more obvious what is important.

 

These guys were watching a race.

Bill says that luck, often, has a lot to do with the images that he gets. 

Sort of like being at the right place at the right time. 

He didn't think that his images were that special until times changed and then the streets with no cars, the night life with no street lights, the people with lovely clothes and a simplicity of life just seemed to make the pictures so much more. 

When asked if he had a problem with people posing too much when being photographed he answered that people often don't pose for long and they forget about the camera after a while. 

I agree for sure. 

I like to talk to people while photographing them until i notice through the lens that they're just looking at me and not at a camera.

 

Interview with Bill Brandt

Q: Why do you think people like so much looking at photographs; is it because people like looking at time passing?

A: I dont know i think it's just a fashion that changed. At the time people weren't interested in photography, now everybody's interested. 

He started photographing in 1929. He's never done anything but photography and always wanted to.

Born in 1904 in London. Both parents were of Russian decent and he spent his early years in Germany.

In his 20s he studied under Man Ray.

1931- settled in England and started to work as a photojournalist.

"Brandt uses the camera as an extention of the eye-- the eye of a poet."

"Brandt has done for London what Bresson and Atget have done for Paris. "

He has not written or said much of anything about his own work.

"The witty life of London in the 30's and the compassionate photos he took during the Depression produce some of his most memorable images."