Compare Two Photographs by Two Different Photographers

Authors Avatar

As Photography Key Skill Essay:

Compare Two Photographs by Two Different Photographers

The first photograph I’m going to analyse was taken by Bill Brandt in 1938. The photograph is composed of a policeman or what seems to be a policeman standing in a dark alley way in Bermondsey, central London.

Bill Brandt was born in London in 1904; his parents were both partly of Russian descent. In 1929 he left a Swiss tuberculosis sanatorium to study with Man Ray in his studio for 3 months then continued to see him regularly for the next 2 years. Man Ray and his circle influenced Brandt profoundly and taught him the value of experimentation.

After working freelance for Paris Magazine in 1930, Brandt returned to London and worked for magazines such as Lilliput, Harper’s Bazaar, and the News Chronicle for which he documented the life of Britain in the very depths of the depression, post World War I. He photographed English middle- and upper-class life, publishing The English at Home in 1936, A Night in London in 1938, and The Camera in London in 1948. Working as a photojournalist his photography was both individual and idiosyncratic, a mix of the norm with a little added flavour, slightly eccentric to the age – the age of surrealism.

Brandt lost interest in reporting towards the end of the war, and focused all his attention towards expressionism and surrealism. He worked extensively with the nude, and often with figural distortions.

Join now!

Also very important to his work were portraits of famous writers and artists. He liked the everlasting natural landscapes and seashores of the British Isles as well as the sky at dawn and twilight. Brandt was well known for his wide-angle, distorting photographs, often strangely lighted, and printed for high contrast.

On a personal note I really like this photograph, the technical quality of lighting and composure is amazing. I think what Brandt is trying to get across to the audience is maybe a feeling of reassurance or quite frightened. From the photograph Bermondsey seems quite a horrible, dark ...

This is a preview of the whole essay