Brandt, Bill

Brandt, Bill

 orig. Hermann Wilhelm Brandt

(born May 1904, Hamburg, Ger.—died Dec. 20, 1983, London, Eng.) German-born British photographer. In 1929 he worked in the studio of Man Ray in Paris. He returned to England in 1931 and took up photojournalism, documenting English industrial workers in the 1930s and covering the home front during World War II. His work reveals the influence of Eugène Atget, Brassaï, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. He is best known for his photographs of British life and especially for his unconventional nudes; he placed his wide-angle camera at close range to the human body, causing a distorted effect that transformed the human body into a series of abstract designs.