In characterizing the photography of British artist Bill Brandt in 1982, ARTnews exclaimed, "In Brandt's hands, the camera yields up a rich and strange world, a dreamlike space filled with mystery, eroticism, and menace." For more than fifty years Brandt used his camera to fulfill a variety of projects. At times his lens was a documentary tool, revealing the layers of social class in England or the impact of World War II on London and its citizens. At other times his camera gave him a way to explore abstract forms as expressed in both the landscape and the human body. Yet in all he photographed, he had a capacity, in his friend Arnold Newman's estimation, "to take everyday life and create moods and attitudes that were not seen before." Newman's portrait of Brandt at age seventy-four conveys some of the mystery that always surrounded the artist and his photography.

Arnold Newman (born 1918)
Polacolor print, 1978
Variant published March 1982
Arnold Newman
©Arnold Newman/Getty Images