BILL BRANDT’S GEOLOGICAL NUDES

East Sussex Coast 1960, courtesy of Pallant House.

After the war he moved away from such documentary-style work, employing a more subjective approach to new subject matter: landscape, and the human body. In one series, which he returned to periodically over two decades, he incorporated both these elements into the same frame, creating experimental portraits in which cropped contours of the human body blend with geological features of the coastline. These were taken on either side of the Channel, generally in Normandy and Sussex. 

This combination of animal and mineral form created abstract images which might be described as expressionist as well as surrealist, stretching the boundaries of modern photography. Knees and boulders become almost indistinguishable; fingers and pebbles intertwine; the curve of a breast echoes the slope of a Down. They were influenced by the sculptures of Henry Moore.

One of these works, taken with a Superwide Hasselblad, is currently on display in the fine winter show at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester: East Sussex Coast 1960. The photo was one of a series printed in the 1961 book Perspective of Nudes.

‘The juxtaposition between the female form and the cliffs at Seaford creates an interesting comparison between textures of skin and chalk as well as confusions in scale: the woman appears as monumental as the surrounding landscape’, writes Miriam O’Connor Perks in the exhibition’s catalogue. Form thus supersedes substance: animal becomes mineral; mineral, animal.

Other photographers featured in the show include Eileen Agar, Lee Miller, John Holloway, Wolfgang Tillmans and Jem Southam.

Sussex Landscape: Chalk, Wood Water is at Pallant House Gallery until April 23, 2023

Bill Brandt escaped from Germany in the 30s and made his name as a photographer chronicling the customs of his adopted compatriots in books such as The English at Home (1936) and articles in illustrated magazines such as Lilliput and Picture Post.