Bill Brandt Analysis

Bill Brandt was a photojournalist and landscape photographer from Hamburg, Germany whose photographic work focuses a lot on documenting various rural and urban landscapes and the human impact on these landscapes as well as the use of the formal elements of lighting, tones and compositions. For this artist analysis, I will be specifically looking at his landscape photographs in response to the theme of 'Society' for this project. I decided to document the work of Bill Brandt in relation to this theme as I intend to take a series of photographs that document the urban society that I live in and around - such as Croydon, Kingston and London - and the impact that we have on our society such as graffiti, street art and the general lack of care we show our society and the environments that we live in as well as the constant changes that we are making to them. This is something I felt inspired by whilst researching and analysing the work of Bill Brandt as I really like the gritty and monochromatic style that his photographs have and it could therefore be an editing style that I take inspiration from and reference within my own photographic responses to this project.

Many of Bill Brandt's photographs are kept central using the rules of thirds and long-distance shot
angles in order to document his chosen urban and rural landscapes and the impact that we have on our society. Since Bill Brandt's work is based on creating a series of landscape-based photographs of rural and urban environments that may or may not have been affected by human life and nature, the artist takes a lot of photographs of these landscapes to capture the natural and manmade beauty of them.

A lot of the photographs that Bill Brandt has taken in order to create his project are based around various rural and urban landscapes and the natural and manmade beauty of the landscapes that he is documenting within his work. He often focuses a lot of his photographic work on the uses of natural lighting, tones and leading line compositions within his photographs, creating stark monochromatic tones within his landscape photographs that draw his target audience's attention to the lighter tones within the landscape, often created by the artificial and natural lighting reflecting off of water or cobblestones on the buildings, pavements and roads. This in
turn creates a leading line of view within his photographs as the target audience's attention is instantly drawn to the leading line created by the road, pavement or a river of water dissecting the centre of his photographs, leading their attention from the foreground of the image further into the background.

This is something that I could potentially take inspiration from within my own photographic work responding to the theme of 'Society' by adding a leading line of focus within my own photographs that could draw the attention of my own target audience into the landscape and society that I will be documenting within my work. Within my photographic response I have decided to take a series of landscape photographs that will document the theme of 'Society' by photographing the different urban environments of Croydon, Kingston and London and the damages and lack of care that humans have for their own society within my photographs, focusing on the grit and grime that the city and town landscapes may have such as graffiti, street art and damages to buildings and the like as well as the changes that we are often making to our own society such as construction sites and the demolishment of buildings.