Review : “Bill Brandt : Nudes 1945 - 1980” - book by Bill Brandt, 1980

Bill Brandt is a curious one. An englishman with a bit of a love for the distorted, slightly surrealist inclinations like those of Man Ray or Salvador Dali. Those inspirations, he notably brought into his most striking work, his nude photography.

Now before you accuse me of sneaking NSFW stuff into this review, I should point out that these are not nude portraits or semi pornographic stuff. These are an artists fascination with both combining structures with the female body or parts of it, to focus on the similarities of their impressions, instead of the usual bodily objectification and the sheer sculptural closeups that makes you wonder about the body as a form or a landscape.

To me, this is the most interesting way of using nude bodies while most other nude photography is boring and a petty excuse to appeal to raunchyness rather than artistic exploration

This book was released in 1980 a few years before Brandt passed away. It presents the highlights of his development in this “field” in a 35 year span. One can quite clearly follow how one style leads to another and the book’s 5 chapters, each represent a certain style, while the whole development still seem interrelated

I particularly like the most distorted and surrealisticly sculptural ones, where you wonder what parts of the body this shot really portrays. But the tear down of the recognition of the parts appeal to ones basic, recognition of pure geometric forms. The “nude” label is almost a misnomer at this point, but still that makes for a bit of a challenge for the viewer

His later work is less surreal and more like collages or design using bodies and bodyparts as a subset of a general expression. These to me, at times, look more like something Storm Thorgerson could have created for a vinyl album, than the classic photography Brandt grew from. I guess there could have been some cross-inspiration there growing through the 70’s. I certainly can imagine Thorgerson, another surrealist brit, bringing indpiration from Brandt into Hipgnosis

Brandts nudes are highly artistic and rather unique, specially the beach shots and the purely sculptural. Normally I try to stay clear of nudes as I rarely find any interesting aspects of them. Bill Brandt is the clear exception.

The layout is simple and straight forward, with emphasis on presenting the photographs only. None of them is spread across two pages. Well done.

A very recommendable book, for an introduction to Brandts nude photography