PHOTOGRAPHY: STUDY AND ANALYSIS
U
sually
Brandt avoided having his subjects look directly at the camera, and he had a
wonderful rapport with children as subjects, but here he seems to have
wanted to make the children self-conscious: they appear already captive to a
precocious sense of duty. The contrast between them and the street children
seems to speak for itself; yet what did it mean that these solemn
party-goers were Brandt's little cousins and their friends? Was he observing
English children, or judging them? From 1936 until the outbreak of war,
Brandt's work took on a steadily darker tinge, reflecting both the political
disasters of the times and the shadows over his personal life. (His wife's
health was weak, and she spent increasing amounts of time convalescing in
Switzerland and France.) In the late 1930s, not even someone so intensely
private as Brandt could escape politics. In France, the formation of a
Popular Front in June 1936 was a belated response to the rise of fascism. A
month later, General Franco rebelled against the republic to begin the
Spanish civil war. Brandt accepted a duty to turn his camera towards scenes
of injustice, though he insisted on showing the sufferings of the Depression
in his own distinctive way. Brandt had made a brief trip to south Wales in
1935, but that was his only foray into industrial Britain until the Jarrow
marchers against unemployment arrived in London on November 8, 1936. They
inspired Brandt to go and see the conditions that had driven them to walk
300 miles to the capital.