Bill Brandt
"Art is always in the eyes of the beholder. Only posterity has the right to point out our mistakes." 1
Three Works in Black and White Photography: A Visit to MoMa, 10 July 2013
The Floor Plan and Guide brochure provided by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) suggests for self-guided visits to concentrate on a section or artist for short visits. Considering the museum's vertical sprawl of six upper levels and two lower levels, this is a sensible consideration. The class assignment led to the third floor, to the Edward Steichen Photography Galleries, where 19 New Acquisitions and Bill Brandt's Shadow and Light exhibits were on display. Our assignment was straightforward, if not simple: select three photographs (or series) which intrigued …show more content…
He was too young to have participated in WWI, but certainly lived through interesting times before his death in December 20th, 1983. He moved to England in 1933, at which point he began to build his reputation as a visionary modernist photographer. Bill Brandt recorded a variety of subjects, though he is very well known for his nude photographs and his techniques for distorting the appearance of the human body in his works. He is styled according to the MoMA curators as "unpredictable."
There are a series of images, eight photographs arranged in a four by two grid, which display the eyes of some well known visual artists of Brandt's time. These close up shots with their exquisite detail of shadow and highlights are different from Brandt's other works which photographed scenes or …show more content…
They are all arranged differently, with different light and shadow accentuating either the expression in the eye, or drawing the observer to the position of the eye, or in the case of three of the older subjects, making the lines of age more salient. It is appealing that Brandt's selected subjects (among them Jean Dubuffet, George Braque, Louise Nevelson, Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti) are artists, and difficult to identify as to gender or race. The photographs also capture that which is most important to an artist: the eyes. Brandt could well have chosen to commemorate his contemporaries with full portraits, but he selected to record only one eye, an interesting choice. We see this record and can be left to wonder about what the subject looked like, what they were thinking,
Three Works in Black and White Photography: A Visit to MoMa, 10 July 2013
The Floor Plan and Guide brochure provided by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) suggests for self-guided visits to concentrate on a section or artist for short visits. Considering the museum's vertical sprawl of six upper levels and two lower levels, this is a sensible consideration. The class assignment led to the third floor, to the Edward Steichen Photography Galleries, where 19 New Acquisitions and Bill Brandt's Shadow and Light exhibits were on display. Our assignment was straightforward, if not simple: select three photographs (or series) which intrigued …show more content…
He was too young to have participated in WWI, but certainly lived through interesting times before his death in December 20th, 1983. He moved to England in 1933, at which point he began to build his reputation as a visionary modernist photographer. Bill Brandt recorded a variety of subjects, though he is very well known for his nude photographs and his techniques for distorting the appearance of the human body in his works. He is styled according to the MoMA curators as "unpredictable."
There are a series of images, eight photographs arranged in a four by two grid, which display the eyes of some well known visual artists of Brandt's time. These close up shots with their exquisite detail of shadow and highlights are different from Brandt's other works which photographed scenes or …show more content…
They are all arranged differently, with different light and shadow accentuating either the expression in the eye, or drawing the observer to the position of the eye, or in the case of three of the older subjects, making the lines of age more salient. It is appealing that Brandt's selected subjects (among them Jean Dubuffet, George Braque, Louise Nevelson, Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti) are artists, and difficult to identify as to gender or race. The photographs also capture that which is most important to an artist: the eyes. Brandt could well have chosen to commemorate his contemporaries with full portraits, but he selected to record only one eye, an interesting choice. We see this record and can be left to wonder about what the subject looked like, what they were thinking,