24 March - 25 July 2004

"Brandt's pictures survive and enter the memory because they were constructed by an artist." David Hockney

The V&A celebrates the centenary of the birth of Bill Brandt (1904-1983), Britain's best-loved photographer of modern times, with a stunning retrospective. With over 150 mainly vintage, gelatin-silver prints from the Bill Brandt Archive, the exhibition displays the finest selection of his rare and famous prints to be seen in Britain for over thirty years.

Bill Brandt remains one of the pre-eminent photographers of the 20th Century. His career as a photographer began in Vienna in 1928, before he moved to Paris where he assisted Man Ray. He settled in London in 1931 and became the great documentarian of British cultural and social life, exposing the vivid contrasts in society between the World Wars.

Peter Sellers, 1963
by Bill Brandt
© Bill Brandt Archive Ltd.

Experimenting with the landscape form, Brandt travelled on wartime trains to photograph the landscapes of ‘Literary Britain’ and created evocative images of Hardy’s Wessex and the Brontë sisters’ Yorkshire Moors. The exhibition includes arresting images of the East End, the northern industrial heartlands and the moonlit streets of blacked-out London.

Following the war, Brandt returned to his interest in the surreal. In his outstanding series, Perspective of Nudes, he radically revised the genre by creating dramatic sculptural images of nudes merging with the landscape.

From the 1940s onwards, a pantheon of great artists and writers were also photographed by Brandt. He produced striking portraits, conveying the very essence of his subjects, including figures such as Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Graham Greene and Peter Sellers.

The striking images Brandt created are essential works. His innovations expanded the medium of photography and gave his work a timeless quality.

Other Sides of Bill Brandt
Also showing in Photography from 24 March will display photographs from a unique album assembled by his first wife, Eva Boros, from 1928-1939.

Bill Brandt: A Centenary Retrospective, curated by John-Paul Kernot, is organised by the Bill Brandt Archive and is circulated by Curatorial Assistance Travelling Exhibitions (CATE), Los Angeles.