Seaford, East Sussex Coast

Bill Brandt British, born Germany

1957

Not on view

Bill Brandt is known for his photographs of London society (high and low) and for his documentation of the improvised air-raid shelters in the London Underground during Germany’s intense bombing campaign known as the Blitz (1940–41). After World War II, perhaps to cleanse his eye, he embarked on an innovative series of nudes using an out-of-date wooden view camera with a wide-angle lens and no shutter. The novelist Lawrence Durrell described the photographs in 1961 as "a prolonged mediation on the mystery of forms." Brandt’s intention was to see with an altered perspective the world then just beginning its own recovery. He hoped the awkward camera designed by Kodak for making close-up pictures of crime scenes might allow him to see "perhaps, like a mouse, a fish or a fly."

Artwork Details

Title: Seaford, East Sussex Coast
Artist: Bill Brandt (British (born Germany), Hamburg 1904–1983 London)
Date: 1957
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: 22.9 x 19.7 cm (9 x 7 3/4 in.)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, and The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1986
Object Number: 1986.1053.12
Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

By Bill Brandt

In the same medium

From the same time and place

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A Room in Haworth Parsonage

Bill Brandt

1945

Françoise Rosay, Belgravia, London, Bill Brandt British, born Germany, Gelatin silver print — Françoise Rosay, Belgravia, London
Bill Brandt
1950s–60s

Sunday at Brighton Before the War, Bill Brandt British, born Germany, Gelatin silver print — Sunday at Brighton Before the War
Bill Brandt
ca. 1936

Parlourmaid at a Window in Kensington, Bill Brandt British, born Germany, Gelatin silver print — Parlourmaid at a Window in Kensington
Bill Brandt
1936–39

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