During the London Bombing, Metro Station, 1940 / Bill Brandt

Bill Brandt was born in Germany in 1904 but later acquired British citizenship. He is considered one of the leading photographers of the twentieth century due to the documentary photographs of the Second World War and his symbolic single figures of artistic and literary figures.

He spent part of his youth in Germany and Switzerland and became interested in photography around the age of twenty. He became very interested in the new French school of photography, which had been accepted by the surrealist movement at the same time, and so in 1929 he went to Paris to live there. He worked with Man Ray for a while and became acquainted with the Surrealists. In 1931 he moved to England. With a series of English at Home (1936) and A Night in London (1938), he established himself as a committed social reporter.

During the German airstrikes (1940-1945) he commissioned the British Home Office to take a series of documentary photographs of London shelters and buildings. After the war, he mainly focused on landscape and single face photography. At the same time, he began working with an old wooden camera and an wide-angle lens, creating unusual, caspid images of naked bodies that emphasized dark / light contrast and symbolic elements (Naked Perspectives, 1961). Published from his photos: Bill Brandt Behind the Camera (1985).

Prepared and arranged by: Narges Sahib Ekhtiari