Bill Brandt
Bill Brandt (1904-1983) has always been one of my favourite photographers. He combined a high contrast black and white gloss to often gritty landscapes, making them seem both surreal and hyperreal. He had quite a range from documentarist of British everyday life to strangely stretched nudes to empty stolid and brooding landscapes to solid portraiture. His nudes often discarded the figure in the landscape and became instead either dominating aspects of it or disembodied fragments, like Henry Moore sculptures.
His skies often seen just on the verge of disgorging a torrent, the air is charged, the world transitioning into a dream.
And of course, this portrait of Francis Bacon. The lamppost appears to waver in and out of reality. Everything just slightly wrong. Portentous.
Solid yet not. 
there’s a certain eerie darkness to these images for sure.
I like the yak. If that is a yak. Whatever it is, I like it.
Comment by amuirin — January 16, 2008 @ 10:43 am
Believe that is a bull in Andalusian Spain.
Comment by aos — January 16, 2008 @ 10:53 am
Great images. I’ll have to look for more of his work.
Comment by Stevo — January 17, 2008 @ 4:18 pm
[...] Bill Brandt Bunch o stuff (Avedon) [...]
Pingback by PhotographyPage: Articles « Revenge of the Castanets — April 17, 2008 @ 3:38 pm
hi yer i love bill brandt, did you know you can go to the v&a and ask to see the real prints but they are really bad you can see where he has really badly used a black pen to colour in the dark bits.
Comment by Steffan Atherton — May 6, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
That is a little disconcerting but overall I’ll forgive him that bit. Still great in my books (and yours, it sounds like). Thanks for the inside info even this kind.
Comment by aos — May 6, 2008 @ 4:44 pm