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Bill Brandt’s belated Bournville book
The Bournville Village Trust (BVT) was set up by chocolate magnate George Cadbury in 1900 to manage the Bournville Estate, a model housing development he had built near his factory on the outskirts of Birmingham. Cadbury’s aim, and the objective of the Trust, was to improve workers’ living conditions and therefore their quality of life in general. Between 1939 and 1943, Bill Brandt was commissioned by the Trust to document these conditions and he set about producing the collection of picture stories on life in inner-city slums built in the 1800s - contrasted with the new municipal housing of the 1930s - which are represented in this book. This body of work, which was known among academics but (until now) unpublished, remained in the archive of BVT until the archive was deposited with Birmingham Central Library in 1993. Not long after this - about 10 years ago - the work was ‘rediscovered’. It is in the form of a loose-leaf album holding 77 enlargements from 6x6cm Rolleiflex negatives (not all of which survive) cropped and arranged in a manner suggesting a proposed layout for publication. Why they were not published at the time is not known, although this book offers theories based on the available evidence and knowledge of Brandt and his practice. The images form a fascinating social document of the period: the interiors of the old back-to-back terraces are artificially lit, cramped and cluttered, while the ‘homes fit for heroes’ are flooded with natural light from their spacious gardens. The book is published in association with Birmingham Library Services and with support from the University of Birmingham. The accompanying text from Peter James surveys the history of the Trust, Brandt’s work, and puts both in the wider context of momentum for social improvement, building for the future, and indeed post-war reconstruction. A further text by Richard Sadler, who knew Brandt and made prints from these negatives for the 1994 exhibition of the work at Birmingham Central Library, looks at the philosophy and technical approach behind Brandt’s photography, and analyses how these have been employed in the discrete sections of the album. The album pages are also reproduced in full at the end of the book. A little gem of social and photographic history.
Homes Fit for Heroes: Photographs by Bill Brandt 1939–43, texts by Peter James and Richard Sadler, published by Dewi Lewis Publishing, £15.99, ISBN 1 904587 07 0.
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