Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light

Anyone who has held off buying a comprehensive book on Bill Brandt will very likely be interested in a new volume being published to accompany an exhibition at MoMA: Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light. 208 pages in length, the new book is being published in the USA by MoMA and in England by Thames and Hudson.

New York Times: A Camera Ravenous for Emotional Depth 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.” [Read more...] 

The Boston Globe Review: Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light The 20th century ended more than a decade ago, time enough to erase any doubts about whether Brandt was its foremost British photographer. He demonstrated mastery of social documentary, portraiture, landscape, nudes. His best work in any of those fields would have made him a major photographer. [Read more...]

Time Lightbox: Let There Be Dark: Bill Brandt’s Shadow and Light Henri Matisse, who knew something about color, had a wary regard for one in particular. “Black,” he once said,“is a force.” At “Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light,” the voluptuous retrospective organized by curator Sarah Hermanson Meister at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, you find out just how powerful a force it can be. In Brandt’s inky photographs, the sky can be a tar pit. Lovers in an illicit room can take on the gray scale and density of anthracite. Darkness has more than an aesthetic appeal for Brandt. For him, its charms are metaphysical. It stabilizes a haphazard world and pays due respect to its mysteries.... [Read more...]
The Book Depository (MoMA) NZ $50.32 incl freight
The Book Depository (Thames & Hudson) $63.67 incl freight

Fishpond (Thames & Hudson) NZ $59.57 incl freight
Amazon (MoMA) US $31.50 excl freight