Bill Brandt

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Bill Brandt

by Bill Brandt
bromide print, 1966
13 1/2 in. x 11 1/2 in. (342 mm x 291 mm)
Purchased, 1982
Photographs Collection
NPG x22409

Sitterback to top

  • Bill Brandt (1904-1983), Photographer. Sitter in 34 portraits, Artist or producer of 120 portraits.

Artistback to top

  • Bill Brandt (1904-1983), Photographer. Artist or producer of 120 portraits, Sitter in 34 portraits.

This portraitback to top

Brandt took this self-portrait in a mirror posed on a pebble beach on the East Sussex coast. The location provided a setting for many of his outdoor nude abstractions which he collected together in his anthology of ninety photographs taken between 1945-1960, Perspective of Nudes (1961). The book is divided into sections ranging from nudes posed in shadowed interiors, mainly in domestic settings in Campden Hill and St John's Wood, to abstracted body shapes shown against coastal stones and rocks.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Rideal, Liz, Insights: Self-portraits, 2005, p. 28 Read entry

    Taken on the East Sussex coast, this gritty black-and-white photograph seems deceptively simple, but is a complex and considered work. The shape of the chalk cliffs reflected in the mirror echoes that of the sitter’s profile and contrasts with the textured shoreline and flat horizon, his head in chiaroscuro against the sky.

Placesback to top

Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top

Events of 1966back to top

Current affairs

The English football team wins against West Germany at the World Cup Final in Wembley.
144 people, including 116 children, die in the Aberfan disaster when a colliery waste tip slides down a mountain in Wales.
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley are sentence to life imprisonment for the brutal Moors Murders.

Art and science

Tom Stoppard's first play Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead premiers. This absurdist play uses two minor characters from Hamlet to explore the existential themes of free will versus determinism and the futility of language.
Seamus Heany publishes his first volume of poems, Death of a Naturalist.

International

The Cultural Revolution is launched in China in order to bring Chinese culture and society in line with communist ideals. It was also, however, an attempt by Mao Zedong to regain control of the country after the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward.
Archbishop of Canterbury, Arthur Michael Ramsey meets Pope Paul VI, the first official meeting between the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches for 400 years.

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