NUDES 1945 – 1980
Bill Brandt, Michael Hiley [Introduction]
Bill Brandt, Michael Hiley [Introduction]: NUDES 1945 – 1980. Boston: New York Graphic Society Books, 1980. First U.S. Edition (from British sheets). Quarto. Black cloth titled in silver. Photo illustrated dust jacket. 114 pp. 100 full-page photo plates. Glossy black jacket with mild rubbing and faint edge wear, primarily along top edge. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. A fine copy in a nearly fine dust jacket.
9.75 x 11.5 hardcover book with 114 pages and 100 finely-printed full-page photoplates. Many of these photographs first appeared in Brandt's Perspective of Nudes (1961), though over of third of the pictures in this volume had never before been published.
From the Publisher: "Bill Brandt started photographing the nude in 1945, and from the outset found his own distinct approach. Brandt has the ability to use odd viewpoints and perspectives to invest common objects with special significance. The photographs in this book are a record of consistent visual inventiveness and form a collection of unparalleled dramatic power."
British born, Bill Brandt studied photography in Paris in 1929, and returned to London as a freelance in 1931. During the depression, he took documentary pictures of the industrial Midlands and Tyneside towns, and of pre-war London. Brandt made a notable series for the Home Office records during the air raids of 1940, showing Londoners in their first improvised shelters. Later he worked for the Ministry of Information. National Buildings Record, Picture Post, and after the war, for Harper's Bazaar. Holiday and the New York Times magazine. Brandt has had numerous one-man exhibitions in Europe and the United States, among them a full-scale retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the Hayward Gallery in London. More recently he has had major shows at the Marlborough Gallery in New York and the National Portrait Gallery in London.