The magnetism of Bill Brandt's snapshots should be able to be referred to and described, inasmuch as it is experienced in a resounding, almost physical way, from the spectator's position. They are beautiful images, which draw attention for their impeccable composition, but which at the same time tend to include some disconcerting element. One is faced with the fruitless attempt to represent in words what his photographs show. For they do not only reproduce a portion of visible reality. In their material and figurative capture, they manage to convey the mystery of the invisible, which has always accompanied them, as if emanating from the enigma that is clearly formulated without thereby betraying it.
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Born in Hamburg in 1904, Bill Brandt began to take a serious interest in photography during his stay at the Davos spa, at the age of twenty, while recovering from tuberculosis. It seems eloquent to place the awakening to photographic sensibility at a time of illness and subsequent convalescence, a time when the body —practically healthy, but still resentful— captures nuances of reality with extraordinary precision.
Edgar A. Poe's story titled The Man of the Crowd precisely illustrates the perceptive acuity of a convalescent, who is imbued with the changing movement of reality, shaped by individuals and groups. Regarding that episode, crucial in Bill Brandt's life, Paul Delany has written that the "clear air and bright alpine light" would have a great impact on his work, as well as —thinking of the dark side— also the omnipresence of x-rays, "inverted photographs" that patients dragged around at all hours, taken by a special camera. An "instrument of destiny, with the capacity to predict the future," which coincides with what Brandt affirmed about every good portrait.
Brandt's subsequent travels through Europe led him to coincide in Paris with Man Ray, his first wife was portrayed by the Hungarian André Kertész, and he even arrived in the city of Barcelona, whose street atmosphere he portrayed. One of those photographs, in fact, is exhibited in the present show. London, however, would be his usual place of residence, where he would spend a good part of his life. Ashamed by the rise of the National Socialist movement, specialists have explained that Brandt tried to erase all ties with his country of origin.
Especially striking, in this sense, are his images during the thirties and forties. Years in which he captured all reality, both socially ---showing the customs of the wealthy classes in contrast to the hard life of the workers--- and also, though to a lesser extent, at a landscape level. In addition to delving into the nature of human psychology, Brandt reveals the contrast between geometric, rigid, and unquestionable forms, and the existence of other forms of life, which prosper semi-randomly.
His images oscillate between a realism falsely devoid of artifice and the phantasmagorical representation of reality, suggesting narratives to which the viewer is hardly obliviousThe richness of nuances and textures in the black and white photographs compiled in the Mapfre Foundation exhibition, curated by Ramón Esparza, allows articulating the subplots that make up the broad spectrum of that reality. The evocative power of shadow, the sinister aspect orunheimlich(literally, "inhospitable") that the commissioner collects in one of his explanations, citing Freud and ---closer to us--- the Barcelona thinker Eugenio Trías, understood as the limit of beauty.
Brandt's images oscillate between a falsely artifice-free realism and the phantasmagorical representation of reality (shadows, mists, or deformed limbs), suggesting narratives to which the viewer is hardly alien. The highest and lowest of the human condition shines in the turbulent era that sends Londoners to sleep in the subway to protect themselves from Luftwaffe bombings, which portrays blocks of buildings illuminated by the night light, and experiences parks populated by strangely beautiful creatures that alternate with rather suspicious silhouettes.
It is not only the ability to whisper stories to the viewer that ratifies Bill Brandt's transcendence. From a properly formal perspective, his work ventures into experimentation, in dialogue with surrealism but free of programmatic guidelines. Artists familiar to us such as Pablo Picasso, Pau Casals, or Joan Miró were portrayed by him, as well as Francis Bacon, Robert Graves, or René Magritte, represented in images that offer glimpses of their inner worlds. Undoubtedly, the artist's gaze better captures the gaze of another artist. And perhaps the latter only allows himself to be portrayed knowing that the former is capable of capturing the exceptionality of his gaze, keeping intact ---like an Oedipal enigma--- the origin of creativity.
Bill Brandt also explores the mystery of sensuality, abounding in curved lines, even if he eventually resorts to the rigor of angularity. He thus seems to reveal the harshness of less ductile and pleasant experiences, such as the unworthy submission of men and women, or the consequences of war. And, nevertheless, in the embers of that world of yesterday, amidst the death throes of a gravely wounded modernity, Brandt finds the space for beauty to flourish by incorporating the shadowy reverse. A critical counter-image that accompanies it, like an x-ray plate, and certifies its authenticity.