Bill Brandt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Brandt - CachedBill Brandt (born Hermann Wilhelm Brandt, 2 May 1904 – 20 December 1983), was a German-British photographer and photojournalist. Although born in ...Bill Brandt Archive
billbrandtarchive.photoshelter.com/ - CachedMy Account · Cart cart · Bill Brandt Archive · Search · Contact · Lightbox. Other Featured Galleries. Social England · Portraits [male] · Landscape · Nudes ...MoMA | Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light
Bill Brandt is a founding figure in photography's modernist traditions, and this exhibition represents a major critical reevaluation of his heralded career. Brandt's ...
帶着驚愕感看世界的攝影大師
報道 2013年03月27日
Stan Honda/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
現代藝術博物館近日舉辦的英國攝影師比爾·布蘭特作品展「比爾·布蘭特：影與光」。
20世紀傑出的英國攝影師比爾·布蘭特(Bill
Brandt)用照片構成一種藝術與人性的平衡，人們常常形容他的作品古怪、神秘、難以抗拒。最好的作品會誘使我們去凝神讀解，我們會揣度它們的形式和心
理狀態，我們會探究那些沉冥的黑色、簡約的白色，也不會放過暗藏於其中的敘事，我們會考慮它們和藝術史的關係，還有它們的紀錄現實主義。布蘭特自己在
1948年的一篇文章中提到，攝影的力量令他嘆服，它可以讓人用新的眼光看世界，帶着一種“驚愕感”去體會。
現代藝術博物館(MoMA)的“比爾·布蘭特：影與光”(Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light)，又一次讓我們有機會領略千姿百態的布蘭特式驚愕和去熟悉化的奇異。在MoMA攝影策展人莎拉·赫爾曼森·梅斯特(Sarah Hermanson Meister)的敏銳策划下，展覽收入將近160幅首版沖印片和相關材料，包括從20世紀30年代中期開始刊載過布蘭特作品的圖片雜誌。整個展覽全面展 現了布蘭特的敏感，他對各種題材的廣泛涉獵，對沖印處理的極致關注——他認為那是攝影師的一項基礎技藝，還有即便在受託作品中也能保持創造性的能力。
追溯標題所透露的軌跡，展覽從他在20世紀30年代和“二戰”期間拍攝的英國人生活開始，這些照片時常是晦暗不明的——跟修拉的炭筆素描有相似之
處。而展覽的終點是20世紀50到60年代的超現實主義作品，是相對更明亮的女性裸體，身體、身體的局部在誇張的視角渲染下變得幾乎無法分辨，甚至已經抽
象，就像布朗庫西(Brancusi)或阿爾普(Arp)那些光滑的生物形態雕塑。
和幾位藝術地位相當的同輩人比起來，布蘭特(1904–1983)的成就不太好明確界定：沃克·埃文斯(Walker Evans, 1903–1975)最出名的是佃農和南方建築的斷壁殘垣，清晰的畫面展現出高絕的技藝。亨利·卡蒂埃-布列松(Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1908–2004)是手持萊卡的大師，用構圖優雅的“決定性瞬間”機敏地捕捉人間百態。
布蘭特對兩者都沒興趣。他的圖片有時候實在太暗了，要弄清拍了些什麼得費點功夫，而且它們都傾向於靜止（他多數時候用得是一台帶三腳架的祿萊）。他 的攝影作品並不僅限於呈現一種視覺風格，而是有一種氛圍，一種情感深度，處處提示着人的脆弱不堪，甚至在城市景觀和風景里都瀰漫著，在你觀賞照片時，這種 氛圍向不同方向擴展開去。
有些作品，比如他在倫敦拍攝的那些身着黑色裙子、圍着拘謹白色圍裙的女僕，看上去帶着鮮明的時代感，彷彿黑白電影，充滿社會衝突。還有一些照片不是 沒有評說的意圖，但卻是在時間裡風格化地搖擺着的。一幅女孩擦拭門檻的陰暗畫面，在許多方面都讓人想起19世紀攝影、夏爾丹(Chardin)和倫勃朗 (Rembrandt)。
布蘭特這個人本身也不乏晦暗之處。他希望成為一個紀錄祖國的英國攝影師，為此他不惜掩蓋自己被領養的身份。1983年去世時，多篇訃聞稱他生在英 國，但他其實出生於漢堡一個富有的德國銀行家和貨運商家族。他在少年時代罹患肺結核，父母被迫把他送到瑞士的療養院，強制性的休養讓他有時間去嘗試攝影。
1927年他去維也納，希望從精神分析的層面醫治他的疾病，結果卻在那裡做起了攝影師助理。他找到了自己的藝術，只不過還沒明確要去哪裡發展。
1929年他搬到巴黎，接下來的5年是關鍵性的，他會定期帶上相機，和朋友一起周遊歐洲（早期的一些嘗試，可以在他的旅伴蓮娜·巴爾韓斯基 [Lyena Barjansky]和艾娃·波羅斯[Eva Boros]保存的影集中看到；波羅斯後來成為他的妻子）。他曾給美國攝影師、畫家、超現實主義者曼·雷(Man Ray)當過一小段時間的助手，用心領會了他的感知力和無所顧忌的暗房技巧。布蘭特研習了尤金·阿傑(Eugène Atget)讚美巴黎的不朽之作，布拉薩伊(Brassaï)對他產生了很深的影響，一位評論家曾說，這位匈牙利裔攝影師在1933年發表的書《夜晚的巴 黎》(Paris by Night)在“描畫這一出深夜裡的人間喜劇時，無論技術還是紀實都表現出了前所未有的精確性。”
到了1934年，布蘭特搬到了英格蘭，在梅斯特看來，原因可能是巴黎有才華的攝影師實在太多。他很快就用兩本書給自己打出了名聲，一本是《家中的英 國人》(The English at Home, 1936)，還有一本是向布拉薩伊致意的《倫敦一夜》(A Night in London, 1938)。
此次MoMA展分成了6部分，將布蘭特在題材上的多樣興趣很好地體現了出來。英國社會各截然不同的階層都有涉及：有嚴肅、獃滯的諾森布里亞礦工，有 身着制服的女傭，也有在梅菲爾公寓客廳里玩雙陸棋的倫敦富人。他在倫敦的街道和公園裡遊盪，在德軍空襲期間，還會去擁擠的地鐵站，躲避炸彈的人們在裡面臉 貼臉睡着，他有幾張最著名的照片就是在那裡拍的。倫敦大停電正好成全了他對陰暗的喜愛。他探尋英格蘭北部那些籠罩在狄更斯式陰鬱氣氛里的粗陋工業城鎮，比 如哈利法克斯和加羅；他去廣闊的田野，拍攝哈德良長城和巨石陣，還去到一片狂風凜冽的荒野，拍一座據說在艾米莉·勃朗特(Emily Brontë)的《呼嘯山莊》里曾經提及的廢棄農舍。
他為雕塑家、演員和文學名家拍肖像照，1960年還盯上了一些老一輩名藝術家的眼睛——有時拍左眼，有時拍右眼，其中包括讓·杜布菲(Jean Dubuffet)、露易絲·內維爾森(Louise Nevelson)、讓·阿爾普(Jean Arp)和阿爾伯托·賈孔梅蒂(Alberto Giacometti)，其成果就是一系列無法分辨性別、種族甚至物種的器官大特寫，僅僅在周圍有一點粗糙、褶皺的皮膚。然後就是所謂的裸體系列，身為一 個已經確立顯赫聲名的超現實主義晚期重要人物，以這樣的風格結束創作生涯是有些意外的。
這些裸體作品被認為是布蘭特一生最偉大的成就，同時可能也是最神秘的。其中有一些，比如《倫敦貝爾格萊維亞》(Belgravia, London)——畫面底部森然出現兩條女人的腿，一隻腳搭在另一條腿的膝蓋上，小腿有一種劇烈的拉伸效果——可能基本上就是這個女人自己拍的（我們自然 很想知道：比爾在哪兒）。還有一些，尤其是在英格蘭和法國的卵石海灘上拍的那些，有種令人不安的古怪。耳朵和前臂顯得無比碩大。有一塊怪誕的肉體局部，看 上去像是一段被截取下來的肢臂，其實不過是一隻裸露的腳，只是彎曲的腳趾不在畫面內。
無論是展覽還是圖冊都體現了布蘭特在藝術上的一種專註。許多看起來在紀實的照片其實是擺拍。拍攝對象中相對富有的往往是家人或朋友；蒲拉特，就是他 經常拍的那位黑頭髮女僕，是在他叔叔家做事的。在做委託作品的時候，他一般會把最好的圖片留下來：1941年一期《圖片郵刊》(Picture Post)中刊載的羅伯特·格雷夫斯(Robert Graves)肖像是一個伏案工作的年輕人；同樣是這組拍攝，在布蘭特自己留下的一幅作品中，詩人顯得老成，他咬着一桿羽毛筆，眼神中略帶點憤怒與迷離。
MoMA攝影作品保管師李·安·達夫納(Lee Ann Daffner)編寫了一篇簡短而迷人的圖錄文章，配圖也十分精彩。文章深入研究了布蘭特為達到一定效果而採用的各種底片微調技巧：用刀片或錢幣加重線條 和紋理；用水墨或白水粉抹除瑕疵，加強光和暗影（例如杜布菲眼中的白色）。
布蘭特在暗房裡對底片進行了全面的修正，以至於每張沖印片多少都算是獨一無二的。令他的信徒們感到錯愕的是，布蘭特在20世紀60年代開始重新沖印 早期的圖片，把柔和滲透的灰色和黑色換成陰沉的黑色和白色，可能是裸體作品中的那種更銳利、明亮的效果使然。梅斯特本可以將這部分作品收入一些到展中，此 外還有20世紀70年代末的一些裸體作品代表，她形容後者有一種令人不安的、含蓄的暴力。
在圖錄文章的結尾，她提到自己還放棄了布蘭特的彩色風景照，以及他在生命最後幾年用現成物品三維組合的作品，她認為那是他在“滿足一點個人的好奇心。”她的最後總結略顯古板，稱布蘭特“和大多數偉大藝術家一樣，在某些時候，還是需要一個編輯的。”
這些被略過的部分，對梅斯特的這個美麗的展覽來說是種缺憾，它本身就像是一部布蘭特派的小說。它把布蘭特的藝術以最高的強度呈獻給我們——這也許是有必要的——但是對那些吸引着他的古怪地帶卻沒有太多提及。
現代藝術博物館(MoMA)的“比爾·布蘭特：影與光”(Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light)，又一次讓我們有機會領略千姿百態的布蘭特式驚愕和去熟悉化的奇異。在MoMA攝影策展人莎拉·赫爾曼森·梅斯特(Sarah Hermanson Meister)的敏銳策划下，展覽收入將近160幅首版沖印片和相關材料，包括從20世紀30年代中期開始刊載過布蘭特作品的圖片雜誌。整個展覽全面展 現了布蘭特的敏感，他對各種題材的廣泛涉獵，對沖印處理的極致關注——他認為那是攝影師的一項基礎技藝，還有即便在受託作品中也能保持創造性的能力。
和幾位藝術地位相當的同輩人比起來，布蘭特(1904–1983)的成就不太好明確界定：沃克·埃文斯(Walker Evans, 1903–1975)最出名的是佃農和南方建築的斷壁殘垣，清晰的畫面展現出高絕的技藝。亨利·卡蒂埃-布列松(Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1908–2004)是手持萊卡的大師，用構圖優雅的“決定性瞬間”機敏地捕捉人間百態。
布蘭特對兩者都沒興趣。他的圖片有時候實在太暗了，要弄清拍了些什麼得費點功夫，而且它們都傾向於靜止（他多數時候用得是一台帶三腳架的祿萊）。他 的攝影作品並不僅限於呈現一種視覺風格，而是有一種氛圍，一種情感深度，處處提示着人的脆弱不堪，甚至在城市景觀和風景里都瀰漫著，在你觀賞照片時，這種 氛圍向不同方向擴展開去。
有些作品，比如他在倫敦拍攝的那些身着黑色裙子、圍着拘謹白色圍裙的女僕，看上去帶着鮮明的時代感，彷彿黑白電影，充滿社會衝突。還有一些照片不是 沒有評說的意圖，但卻是在時間裡風格化地搖擺着的。一幅女孩擦拭門檻的陰暗畫面，在許多方面都讓人想起19世紀攝影、夏爾丹(Chardin)和倫勃朗 (Rembrandt)。
布蘭特這個人本身也不乏晦暗之處。他希望成為一個紀錄祖國的英國攝影師，為此他不惜掩蓋自己被領養的身份。1983年去世時，多篇訃聞稱他生在英 國，但他其實出生於漢堡一個富有的德國銀行家和貨運商家族。他在少年時代罹患肺結核，父母被迫把他送到瑞士的療養院，強制性的休養讓他有時間去嘗試攝影。
1927年他去維也納，希望從精神分析的層面醫治他的疾病，結果卻在那裡做起了攝影師助理。他找到了自己的藝術，只不過還沒明確要去哪裡發展。
1929年他搬到巴黎，接下來的5年是關鍵性的，他會定期帶上相機，和朋友一起周遊歐洲（早期的一些嘗試，可以在他的旅伴蓮娜·巴爾韓斯基 [Lyena Barjansky]和艾娃·波羅斯[Eva Boros]保存的影集中看到；波羅斯後來成為他的妻子）。他曾給美國攝影師、畫家、超現實主義者曼·雷(Man Ray)當過一小段時間的助手，用心領會了他的感知力和無所顧忌的暗房技巧。布蘭特研習了尤金·阿傑(Eugène Atget)讚美巴黎的不朽之作，布拉薩伊(Brassaï)對他產生了很深的影響，一位評論家曾說，這位匈牙利裔攝影師在1933年發表的書《夜晚的巴 黎》(Paris by Night)在“描畫這一出深夜裡的人間喜劇時，無論技術還是紀實都表現出了前所未有的精確性。”
到了1934年，布蘭特搬到了英格蘭，在梅斯特看來，原因可能是巴黎有才華的攝影師實在太多。他很快就用兩本書給自己打出了名聲，一本是《家中的英 國人》(The English at Home, 1936)，還有一本是向布拉薩伊致意的《倫敦一夜》(A Night in London, 1938)。
此次MoMA展分成了6部分，將布蘭特在題材上的多樣興趣很好地體現了出來。英國社會各截然不同的階層都有涉及：有嚴肅、獃滯的諾森布里亞礦工，有 身着制服的女傭，也有在梅菲爾公寓客廳里玩雙陸棋的倫敦富人。他在倫敦的街道和公園裡遊盪，在德軍空襲期間，還會去擁擠的地鐵站，躲避炸彈的人們在裡面臉 貼臉睡着，他有幾張最著名的照片就是在那裡拍的。倫敦大停電正好成全了他對陰暗的喜愛。他探尋英格蘭北部那些籠罩在狄更斯式陰鬱氣氛里的粗陋工業城鎮，比 如哈利法克斯和加羅；他去廣闊的田野，拍攝哈德良長城和巨石陣，還去到一片狂風凜冽的荒野，拍一座據說在艾米莉·勃朗特(Emily Brontë)的《呼嘯山莊》里曾經提及的廢棄農舍。
他為雕塑家、演員和文學名家拍肖像照，1960年還盯上了一些老一輩名藝術家的眼睛——有時拍左眼，有時拍右眼，其中包括讓·杜布菲(Jean Dubuffet)、露易絲·內維爾森(Louise Nevelson)、讓·阿爾普(Jean Arp)和阿爾伯托·賈孔梅蒂(Alberto Giacometti)，其成果就是一系列無法分辨性別、種族甚至物種的器官大特寫，僅僅在周圍有一點粗糙、褶皺的皮膚。然後就是所謂的裸體系列，身為一 個已經確立顯赫聲名的超現實主義晚期重要人物，以這樣的風格結束創作生涯是有些意外的。
這些裸體作品被認為是布蘭特一生最偉大的成就，同時可能也是最神秘的。其中有一些，比如《倫敦貝爾格萊維亞》(Belgravia, London)——畫面底部森然出現兩條女人的腿，一隻腳搭在另一條腿的膝蓋上，小腿有一種劇烈的拉伸效果——可能基本上就是這個女人自己拍的（我們自然 很想知道：比爾在哪兒）。還有一些，尤其是在英格蘭和法國的卵石海灘上拍的那些，有種令人不安的古怪。耳朵和前臂顯得無比碩大。有一塊怪誕的肉體局部，看 上去像是一段被截取下來的肢臂，其實不過是一隻裸露的腳，只是彎曲的腳趾不在畫面內。
無論是展覽還是圖冊都體現了布蘭特在藝術上的一種專註。許多看起來在紀實的照片其實是擺拍。拍攝對象中相對富有的往往是家人或朋友；蒲拉特，就是他 經常拍的那位黑頭髮女僕，是在他叔叔家做事的。在做委託作品的時候，他一般會把最好的圖片留下來：1941年一期《圖片郵刊》(Picture Post)中刊載的羅伯特·格雷夫斯(Robert Graves)肖像是一個伏案工作的年輕人；同樣是這組拍攝，在布蘭特自己留下的一幅作品中，詩人顯得老成，他咬着一桿羽毛筆，眼神中略帶點憤怒與迷離。
MoMA攝影作品保管師李·安·達夫納(Lee Ann Daffner)編寫了一篇簡短而迷人的圖錄文章，配圖也十分精彩。文章深入研究了布蘭特為達到一定效果而採用的各種底片微調技巧：用刀片或錢幣加重線條 和紋理；用水墨或白水粉抹除瑕疵，加強光和暗影（例如杜布菲眼中的白色）。
布蘭特在暗房裡對底片進行了全面的修正，以至於每張沖印片多少都算是獨一無二的。令他的信徒們感到錯愕的是，布蘭特在20世紀60年代開始重新沖印 早期的圖片，把柔和滲透的灰色和黑色換成陰沉的黑色和白色，可能是裸體作品中的那種更銳利、明亮的效果使然。梅斯特本可以將這部分作品收入一些到展中，此 外還有20世紀70年代末的一些裸體作品代表，她形容後者有一種令人不安的、含蓄的暴力。
在圖錄文章的結尾，她提到自己還放棄了布蘭特的彩色風景照，以及他在生命最後幾年用現成物品三維組合的作品，她認為那是他在“滿足一點個人的好奇心。”她的最後總結略顯古板，稱布蘭特“和大多數偉大藝術家一樣，在某些時候，還是需要一個編輯的。”
這些被略過的部分，對梅斯特的這個美麗的展覽來說是種缺憾，它本身就像是一部布蘭特派的小說。它把布蘭特的藝術以最高的強度呈獻給我們——這也許是有必要的——但是對那些吸引着他的古怪地帶卻沒有太多提及。
“比爾·布蘭特：影與光”在現代藝術博物館展出，展覽截止至8月12日。(212) 708-9400，moma.org。
本文最初發表於2013年3月8日。
翻譯：經雷
本文最初發表於2013年3月8日。
翻譯：經雷
A Camera Ravenous for Emotional Depth
March 27, 2013
Stan Honda/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
An installation view of “Bill Brandt:
Shadow and Light,” a new exhibition featuring the work of the British
photographer, at the Museum of Modern Art.
The pre-eminent British photographer of
the 20th century, Bill Brandt, took pictures whose balance of art and
humanity is frequently called strange, mysterious and irresistible. The
best induce us to pore over them, exploring their psychology as much as
their form, their implied narratives as much as their brooding blacks or
parsimonious whites, their connections to the history of art as much as
their documentary realism. Brandt himself wrote in 1948 that he admired
photography’s power to make people see the world anew, to experience it
with “a sense of wonder.”
“Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light” at the Museum of Modern Art is the latest chance to experience the several varieties of Brandtian wonder and defamiliarizing strangeness. Organized with sharp acumen by Sarah Hermanson Meister, a MoMA photography curator, it presents nearly 160 vintage prints and related material, including examples of the illustrated magazines that published Brandt’s work starting in the mid-1930s. All told the show provides a sweeping view of Brandt’s sensibility, his wide-ranging subject matter, his obsession with the printing process as an essential part of the photographer’s art and his ability to function creatively even when on assignment.
Following the trajectory suggested by its title, the show begins with
the often penumbral images — not unlike Seurat’s charcoal drawings — of
British life that he took in the 1930s and during World War II. It ends
with his Surrealist, relatively light-bathed images of female nudes
from the 1950s and ’60s, in which exaggerated viewpoints render bodies,
and parts of bodies, nearly unrecognizable if not abstract, like smooth
biomorphic sculptures worthy of Brancusi or Arp.
The achievements of Brandt (1904-83) are not as firmly fixed in the mind as those of his contemporaries and artistic equals: Walker Evans (1903-75) is known for the consummate lucidity of his images of sharecroppers and weathered Southern architecture. Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), master of the hand-held Leica, captured people on the fly in elegantly composed “decisive moments.”
Brandt was interested in neither. His pictures can be so dark that it takes a while to know what’s what, and they tend toward stillness. (He worked for the most part with a Rolleiflex box camera on a tripod.) More than a visual style, his photographs have a kind of atmosphere, an emotional depth, a sense of human vulnerability that extends even to the city views and landscapes, and that expands in several directions as you study the pictures.
Some, like those of London parlormaids on duty in starchy white aprons over black dresses, seem quintessentially of the moment, made for black-and-white film and rife with social tension. Others, though hardly without such commentary, oscillate stylistically in time. A shadowy image of a girl scrubbing a doorsill variously brings to mind 19th-century photography, Chardin and Rembrandt.
Brandt was not beyond ambiguity himself. His desire to be seen as an English photographer recording his homeland led him to obscure the fact that it was an adopted one. When he died in 1983 more than one obituary said he was born in England, though he was actually born in Hamburg to a family of wealthy German bankers and shippers. He suffered from tuberculosis as a teenager, prompting his parents to send him to Swiss sanitariums where enforced rest enabled him to dabble in photography.
In 1927 he went to Vienna, seeking a psychoanalytic cure for his disease and ended up working as a photographer’s assistant. He had found his art, although it wasn’t yet clear where he would pursue it.
In 1929 he settled in Paris for five crucial years, making periodic trips through Europe with a camera and friends. (His early efforts can be viewed in photo albums kept by his companions, Lyena Barjansky and Eva Boros; Boros later became his wife.) He worked briefly as an assistant to the American photographer, painter and Surrealist Man Ray, taking to heart both his sensibility and his freewheeling darkroom techniques. Brandt familiarized himself with Eugène Atget’s monumental ode to Paris and was deeply influenced by Brassaï, the Hungarian-born photographer whose 1933 book, “Paris by Night,” as one critic put it, portrayed the “late-night human comedy with a technical and documentary precision unknown before his time.”
By 1934 Brandt was in England to stay, driven there perhaps, Ms. Meister suggests, because Paris was nearly overrun with talented photographers. He soon established himself with two books, “The English at Home” (1936) and, with a nod to Brassai “A Night in London” (1938).
Divided into six sections, the MoMA show gives an excellent account of the sheer variety of Brandt’s subject matter. He portrayed distinctly different levels of the British class system: from grave, besooted Northumbrian miners to those uniformed parlormaids to wealthy Londoners playing backgammon in a Mayfair drawing room. He roamed London’s streets and parks and, during the Blitz, the crowded underground stations where people sought shelter, sleeping cheek to jowl, and where he made some of his best-known images. The London blackout played to his love of darkness. He also explored the gritty industrial towns in the north of England, like Halifax and Jarrow, shrouded in Dickensian gloom, and he took to the open countryside to capture images of Hadrian’s Wall, Stonehenge and a ruined farmhouse on the edge of a windswept moor that is thought to have figured in Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.”
He made portraits of sculptors, actors and literary notables, and in 1960 zeroed in on the eyes — sometimes the left, sometimes the right — of distinguished, rather ancient artists (among them Jean Dubuffet, Louise Nevelson, Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti), resulting in extreme close-ups of organs of sight surrounded by leathery, sagging skin that are beyond gender, race and even species. And finally there are the so-called nudes, the surprise ending of an already illustrious career and potent latecomers to the history of Surrealism.
Considered his greatest achievement, these are perhaps the most mysterious of all Brandt’s work. In some, like “Belgravia, London” — in which a woman’s legs loom up from the bottom of the image, and a foot hooked over the other knee presents a drastically elongated calf — the picture might almost have been taken by the woman herself. (We certainly wonder: Where’s Bill?) Others, especially those taken on pebbly beaches in England and France, can seem disturbingly strange. Ears and forearms become colossal. A shockingly odd chunk of flesh resembles an amputated limb but is actually the sole of a bare foot whose bent toes are out of sight.
Both the show and catalog demonstrate the single-mindedness of Brandt’s artistry. Many of his seemingly documentary images were posed. His wealthier subjects were often family members or friends; Pratt, the dark-haired parlormaid he frequently photographed, worked for his uncle. When shooting on assignment he tended to retain the best images for himself: the portrait of Robert Graves that appeared in a 1941 issue of Picture Post shows a young man focused on his work; the one from the same session that Brandt held back shows the poet looking more mature, a quill pen clasped between his teeth and a slightly mad, oracular gleam in his eye.
A short, fascinating, well-illustrated catalog essay by Lee Ann Daffner, the Modern’s conservator of photography, delves into Brandt’s extensive fine-tuning of his negatives to achieve the effects he wanted: highlighting lines and textures with razor blades or pencils; removing imperfections and intensifying lights and darks with ink, wash or white gouache (as on the white of Dubuffet’s eye).
In the darkroom Brandt manipulated his negatives to such an extent that each print was more or less unique. And to the dismay of his admirers in the 1960s he began to reprint his early images, replacing their soft seeping grays and blacks with stark blacks and whites, perhaps as a result of the sharper, lighter effects of the nudes. Ms. Meister might have included a few examples of these, along with a few examples of his nudes from the late 1970s, which she characterizes as disturbing and implicitly violent.
At the end of her excellent catalog essay she notes that she has also omitted the color landscapes and the three-dimensional assemblages Brandt made from found objects near the end of his life that she describes as “a private curiosity.” She concludes with the slightly prim observation that “like most great artists, Brandt, upon occasion, needed an editor.”
Learning of these omissions slightly undermines her beautiful show, revealing it as something of a Brandtian fiction in itself. It gives us Brandt’s artistry at full- strength — which may have been needed — without quite revealing all the strange places to which it drove him.
“Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light” at the Museum of Modern Art is the latest chance to experience the several varieties of Brandtian wonder and defamiliarizing strangeness. Organized with sharp acumen by Sarah Hermanson Meister, a MoMA photography curator, it presents nearly 160 vintage prints and related material, including examples of the illustrated magazines that published Brandt’s work starting in the mid-1930s. All told the show provides a sweeping view of Brandt’s sensibility, his wide-ranging subject matter, his obsession with the printing process as an essential part of the photographer’s art and his ability to function creatively even when on assignment.
按图放大
2012 Bill Brandt Archive Ltd.
Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light
Nearly 160 prints and related material are at MoMA.
按图放大
2012 Bill Brandt Archive Ltd.
“Seaford, East Sussex Coast” (1957), one of nearly 160 vintage prints and related materials in the show.
按图放大
Collection David Dechman and Michel Mecure, 2012 Bill Brandt Archive Ltd
“Belgravia, London” (1951)
The achievements of Brandt (1904-83) are not as firmly fixed in the mind as those of his contemporaries and artistic equals: Walker Evans (1903-75) is known for the consummate lucidity of his images of sharecroppers and weathered Southern architecture. Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), master of the hand-held Leica, captured people on the fly in elegantly composed “decisive moments.”
Brandt was interested in neither. His pictures can be so dark that it takes a while to know what’s what, and they tend toward stillness. (He worked for the most part with a Rolleiflex box camera on a tripod.) More than a visual style, his photographs have a kind of atmosphere, an emotional depth, a sense of human vulnerability that extends even to the city views and landscapes, and that expands in several directions as you study the pictures.
Some, like those of London parlormaids on duty in starchy white aprons over black dresses, seem quintessentially of the moment, made for black-and-white film and rife with social tension. Others, though hardly without such commentary, oscillate stylistically in time. A shadowy image of a girl scrubbing a doorsill variously brings to mind 19th-century photography, Chardin and Rembrandt.
Brandt was not beyond ambiguity himself. His desire to be seen as an English photographer recording his homeland led him to obscure the fact that it was an adopted one. When he died in 1983 more than one obituary said he was born in England, though he was actually born in Hamburg to a family of wealthy German bankers and shippers. He suffered from tuberculosis as a teenager, prompting his parents to send him to Swiss sanitariums where enforced rest enabled him to dabble in photography.
In 1927 he went to Vienna, seeking a psychoanalytic cure for his disease and ended up working as a photographer’s assistant. He had found his art, although it wasn’t yet clear where he would pursue it.
In 1929 he settled in Paris for five crucial years, making periodic trips through Europe with a camera and friends. (His early efforts can be viewed in photo albums kept by his companions, Lyena Barjansky and Eva Boros; Boros later became his wife.) He worked briefly as an assistant to the American photographer, painter and Surrealist Man Ray, taking to heart both his sensibility and his freewheeling darkroom techniques. Brandt familiarized himself with Eugène Atget’s monumental ode to Paris and was deeply influenced by Brassaï, the Hungarian-born photographer whose 1933 book, “Paris by Night,” as one critic put it, portrayed the “late-night human comedy with a technical and documentary precision unknown before his time.”
By 1934 Brandt was in England to stay, driven there perhaps, Ms. Meister suggests, because Paris was nearly overrun with talented photographers. He soon established himself with two books, “The English at Home” (1936) and, with a nod to Brassai “A Night in London” (1938).
Divided into six sections, the MoMA show gives an excellent account of the sheer variety of Brandt’s subject matter. He portrayed distinctly different levels of the British class system: from grave, besooted Northumbrian miners to those uniformed parlormaids to wealthy Londoners playing backgammon in a Mayfair drawing room. He roamed London’s streets and parks and, during the Blitz, the crowded underground stations where people sought shelter, sleeping cheek to jowl, and where he made some of his best-known images. The London blackout played to his love of darkness. He also explored the gritty industrial towns in the north of England, like Halifax and Jarrow, shrouded in Dickensian gloom, and he took to the open countryside to capture images of Hadrian’s Wall, Stonehenge and a ruined farmhouse on the edge of a windswept moor that is thought to have figured in Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.”
He made portraits of sculptors, actors and literary notables, and in 1960 zeroed in on the eyes — sometimes the left, sometimes the right — of distinguished, rather ancient artists (among them Jean Dubuffet, Louise Nevelson, Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti), resulting in extreme close-ups of organs of sight surrounded by leathery, sagging skin that are beyond gender, race and even species. And finally there are the so-called nudes, the surprise ending of an already illustrious career and potent latecomers to the history of Surrealism.
Considered his greatest achievement, these are perhaps the most mysterious of all Brandt’s work. In some, like “Belgravia, London” — in which a woman’s legs loom up from the bottom of the image, and a foot hooked over the other knee presents a drastically elongated calf — the picture might almost have been taken by the woman herself. (We certainly wonder: Where’s Bill?) Others, especially those taken on pebbly beaches in England and France, can seem disturbingly strange. Ears and forearms become colossal. A shockingly odd chunk of flesh resembles an amputated limb but is actually the sole of a bare foot whose bent toes are out of sight.
Both the show and catalog demonstrate the single-mindedness of Brandt’s artistry. Many of his seemingly documentary images were posed. His wealthier subjects were often family members or friends; Pratt, the dark-haired parlormaid he frequently photographed, worked for his uncle. When shooting on assignment he tended to retain the best images for himself: the portrait of Robert Graves that appeared in a 1941 issue of Picture Post shows a young man focused on his work; the one from the same session that Brandt held back shows the poet looking more mature, a quill pen clasped between his teeth and a slightly mad, oracular gleam in his eye.
A short, fascinating, well-illustrated catalog essay by Lee Ann Daffner, the Modern’s conservator of photography, delves into Brandt’s extensive fine-tuning of his negatives to achieve the effects he wanted: highlighting lines and textures with razor blades or pencils; removing imperfections and intensifying lights and darks with ink, wash or white gouache (as on the white of Dubuffet’s eye).
In the darkroom Brandt manipulated his negatives to such an extent that each print was more or less unique. And to the dismay of his admirers in the 1960s he began to reprint his early images, replacing their soft seeping grays and blacks with stark blacks and whites, perhaps as a result of the sharper, lighter effects of the nudes. Ms. Meister might have included a few examples of these, along with a few examples of his nudes from the late 1970s, which she characterizes as disturbing and implicitly violent.
At the end of her excellent catalog essay she notes that she has also omitted the color landscapes and the three-dimensional assemblages Brandt made from found objects near the end of his life that she describes as “a private curiosity.” She concludes with the slightly prim observation that “like most great artists, Brandt, upon occasion, needed an editor.”
Learning of these omissions slightly undermines her beautiful show, revealing it as something of a Brandtian fiction in itself. It gives us Brandt’s artistry at full- strength — which may have been needed — without quite revealing all the strange places to which it drove him.
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