Opening up new perspectives

William Bishop reviews the major Barbican retrospective of a giant of British photography

The Photographic Journal, December 1993

Brandt was quintessentially the man of few words who wanted his pictures to speak for themselves. His widow, Noya, confirms this to be so. But anyone who looks carefully will be able to receive the variety of messages which the pictures offer, though some are enigmatic.

The current major retrospective exhibition of around 400 photographs by Bill Brandt at the Barbican Art Gallery (until 12 December 1993) shows just the tip of the iceberg of Brandt's life's work in photography. But it does decisively indicate the directions taken and the heights reached.

Selection for the exhibition was a formidable task undertaken by the art historian and writer, Ian Jeffrey, who took this occasion as an opportunity to open up new perspectives on Brandt. He has become rather typecast in recent years as the hero of that territory in British photography where the real and the surreal collide.

Between the real and surreal

In fact Brandt straddles that divide with a foot in both camps. His apparently genuine social concern revealed itself in much of his social documentary photography which was taken with an eye to publication. And his identification with a Surrealist perception of the world emerges clearly and strongly in still life studies suited for publication in the magazine Lilliput.

It is important to remember that Bill Brandt was a working photographer in the sense that he sought to earn his living with his camera. But it was the dedication and the talent inherent in him as an individual, coupled with his personal obstinacy, that resulted in the work speaking for himself and itself and ranking him as an artist.

It is his peculiar character which finds reflection in the photography, and his extreme shyness appears to have found compensation in the ability of many of his pictures to shout for him.

His ability to fade into the background also meant that the subject was given prominence in his photographs. And his ability for empathy with people in different situations and social positions gave a further strength to his social documentary work.

It was this apparent ability to feel along with others, combined with his sharp eye for telling detail and his skills at graphic and pictorial expression, which made him a fine illustrator of a situation. His underground shelter series, for example, provided a clear and direct description of the reality of this wartime situation.

The magazines which he worked for, particularly Picture Post, drew richly on this illustrative talent, and publication in the form of the book allowed him scope to develop and illustrate a theme at greater length. All this is evident from the Barbican exhibition, which also included examples of magazine layouts.

Influences on Brandt

In the book which accompanies the exhibition, Ian Jeffrey draws attention to the link between Brandt's treatment by pschyoanalysis (in connection with tuberculosis) with its importance attached to dreams, and the image with its symbolic potential which photography can exploit.

Brandt's empathy with Surrealism can therefore be seen as the fusion point for the world of psychoanalysis and dream with the photographic image.

Bill Branclt in fact first took up photography on the advice of a doctor in Vienna who was treating him. This lead to an introduction to Man Ray in whose Paris studio Brandt received his first acquaintance with photography as a profession. By 1934 he was employed on the staff of Weekly Illustrated in Britain, leaving in December 1938 to be a staff photographer with Picture Post.

From the art historical perspective, Ian Jeffrey details a number of influences on Brandt including the Surrealist writer René Crevel and the then anachronistic Symbolist movement. He also maintains that Rrandt was a poor servant due to having his own anachronistic leanings.

This personal slant in his work was given wider scope to emerge during the war years which disrupted settled social life after 1939. His employment by the British Government for official assignments during the war actually gave him a greater freedom for the expression of his inner voices.

Postwar nudes and portraits

The post war period called for adaptation to the changed conditions. Besides a type of landscape subject Brandt moved into fashion and particularly nude photography while continuing with portraiture.

By the time that he had been recognised as an artist, he had long been into his final mode as suggested by Ian Jeffrey: "The photographer now becomes the child, and works from the child's viewpoint, as an astounded but discreet witness. He is playful as ever, except that the new game is serious, even monstrous."

The exhibition and book make no attempt to reinforce the stereotype or force home any dramatic insights. But they do introduce new perspectives by laying out samples of the wide range of the body of work produced by Brandt and placing him within the broad context of his time with its fashions, historical events and employment demands.

Yet despite this major retrospective examination of Bill Brandt and his photographs, he remains true to the Surrealist ideal - he remains an enigma. Detailed analysis, if it were possible, might destroy the mystery and relieve his pictures of their power over the imagination.

Indeed, speaking of portraiture, Brandt remarked in 1948: "Andre Breton once said that a portrait should not only be an image but an oracle one questions, and that the photographer's aim should be a profound likeness, which physically and morally predicts the subject's entire future."

Those photographs which Brandt made to please himself rather than others can be taken together as a symbolic portrait of himself. Not in a predictive way, but in retrospect.

Certainly, Bill Brandt's photographs speak for him, indirectly of himself but directly of the world of his imagination as it meshed with the appearances of the 'real' world. Indeed, the portrait of René Magritte (see p.412) could well stand in for Brazidt himself, as artist, playing as it does with appearances and meanings, photographically. It echoes his own self-portraits.

A retrospective sample of work should provide an opportunity for summing up the artist and making an assessment of the life. Brandt seems to defy summing up and no comprehensive assessment has been attempted by Ian Jeffrey. However, maybe new light will be thrown en Brandt in the future. At present we must accept the evidence of our eyes and the known facts.

The man is embodied in his oeuvre, and yet the work is more than the sum total of the man. It speaks of a world which is common to us all: the external world, memory, imagination, and the dream. Perhaps it is the dreamlike quality - the suspension from time and place - which largely contributes to the potency behind the popularity of these aesthetic images.

Indeed, the collective unconscious mind, posited by the pioneer psychologist Carl Jung, probably has influences upon us which are more powerful than our consciously made decisions. Brandt is awash with imagery shaped from this deeper realm of being, and inevitably we respond, though at present can hardly say why.That, you could say, is art. It has its mystery, at least for the present.

Creation in the darkroom

Brandt placed great emphasis on printing, and it appears that for him Leing in the darkroom was like being inside the unconscious mind. Here his imagination could change visual appearances with the wave of a hand. You could say that it was in his darkroom that his real work was done, where the prints were made. The darkroom could be likened to the womb for the creation of his images. Certainly according to Noya Brandt, Bill's darkroom was like a hovel and he did not invite people into it. Perhaps for him it was not so much a physical place but more of a magical space where light and dark came together with primeval meaningfulness - where pictures emerged and were born into the world.

The latter part of his life was dogged by illness and as a consequence he did not always print his own work. However, he did approve prints before signing them. Originally the image in a magazine or book was the intended end result of his work, but only much later did the print take on importance in itself.

Today Brandt's prints may seem at least as important as his numerous books, if not more so. His stature as an artist rests on both these forms of the work, and looking at these images, his status as a significant visual artist of world stature seems secure.

The first major touring exhibition of Bill Brandt's work to be seen in Britain was organised by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, so it is fitting that at last enough individual energy has been found to mount a worthy retrospective show in the country which owned him as a citizen. Good though this is, this will not be the last word on Brandt, nor his last posthumous exhibition.

William Bishop

'Bill Brandt Photographs 1928-1983' is on show at the Barbican Gallery until 12 December 1993. Following this a further major retrospective of Bill Brandt's work will be on show at the Mead Gallery Arts Centre, University of Warwick, 8 January-12 February 1994.(open Mon-Fri noon-8pm, Sat 10am-8pm). A book catalogue is publis