Bill Brandt 1904-1983

Although he is best known as a photographer, Brandt produced a significant body of assemblage works between the mid-1960s and 70s which are a key but little-known part of his oeuvre. Created during a period of just over a decade, the assemblages had their origin in the varied objects that Brandt collected, partly in Provence and partly in England, and brought together later, attaching them to painted boards and setting them in specially made perspex boxes. These pieces were rarely seen outside the artist’s home and were themselves the subject of a series of photographs that Brandt took.The obviously surrealist element provides a clear link with Brandt’s early years when he had worked as a studio assistant to Man Ray in 1929, but also has links to the surrealist object/collage constructions of his contemporaries Paul Nash and Ceri Richards. Thus, works such as this help to remind us that there are other angles to Brandt’s work beyond the social documentary photography for which he is perhaps best known.