By examining the prints closely, viewers can also see that nothing was off-limits for Mr. Brandt when it came to darkroom work. He would print something one way and then print it in a totally different way, recrop it and often extensively retouch. He would use a straight razor to cut, scrape and press the emulsion, a fine brush to apply ink or watercolor washes, or a graphite pencil to add or strengthen detail.
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He certainly wasn’t the only photographer to retouch images extensively or to mine different sections of the gray scale. But the wildly different printing approaches he took during his career made his work difficult to understand fully.
The MOMA exhibit, which runs through Aug. 12, is a tribute not only to the breadth of his work, but also to the primacy of the print — the physical object — in truly comprehending photographic artists.
“In the past, discussion of the dramatic evolution of Brandt’s printing style has been relegated to the sidelines, and while it is necessary to value the nearly impenetrable darkness and muted tones of his early prints from the 1930s, it is not so simple to dismiss the forcefulness of his later interpretations as an aging man’s bastard prints,” Ms. Meister wrote in the book’s introduction. “Indeed, a significant part of Brandt’s art is that the exposure of the negative was, for him, only the beginning. In many respects, each Brandt print is unique because the pervasiveness of his hand in retouching his work — to correct and to enhance, with a variety of tools — means that it is rare to find two prints presented in an identical manner.”
Bill Brandt’s Negative Beginnings
