Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light - Hardcover

'A perfect introduction to his striking work' - Amateur Photographer '... gives an insight not only into his image making and printing, but also into the man himself' - Black & White Photography 'Brings together for the first time all the strands to identify a coherent pattern ... There is so much to applaud and inspire here ... Brandt's reputation as the most British of photographers continues to be enhanced, at home and abroad' - The World of Interiors 'This full examination of Brandt's life's work is one of the broadest and most interesting ... a wealth of biographical material ... the technical details of how he shaped his final images are fascinating' - Amateur Photographer

Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light is the first full-scale examination of Brandt’s oeuvre that attempts to trace a coherent trajectory across the photographer’s multifaceted career. With 162 rich duotone reproductions made from the finest of the photographer’s vintage prints, this book seeks to lay out Brandt’s career in ‘all its unruly splendour,’ as Sarah Hermanson Meister writes in her introductory essay. Meister’s fresh scholarship and keen attention to the chronological developments of Brandt’s career – including, for the first time, an analysis of the dramatic evolution of Brandt’s printing techniques – shed new light on an artist long considered an enigma by art historians. A comprehensive survey of the work Brandt published during World War II in a number of popular illustrated magazines reveals the origins of some of his most remarkable postwar work, while a technical examination of the photographer’s often painstaking retouching techniques, accompanied by detailed illustrations, offers an intimate behind-the-scenes look at the process that was critical to the ultimate impact of Brandt’s extraordinary photographs.