Distilled Shadows

It is as though the depths of wisdom were contained in the spectrum of reds, oranges, yellows and blues, glowing and pulsing with life.

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Here, we are camped for the night, our big fire, heaped high with rosiny logs and branches, is blazing like a sunrise, gladly giving back the light slowly sifted from the sunbeams of centuries of summers; and in the glow of that old sunlight how impressively surrounding objects are brought forward in relief against the outer darkness! Gazing at a campfire, our eyes drink in the slowly distilled centuries of summers—the finest Scotch nature has to offer.

Another Scot, George MacDonald, takes us deeper into the mysteries of this phenomenon. Ralph, to better rule his subjects, seeks to learn of them, finding that the true shadows as opposed to the ghastly creatures cast by gas or electric lights, or the hideous creatures found in mirrors are cast only by candlelight or firelight, doing their delicate work only in the quiet, only in the reflective and soul searching atmosphere of true flame. And what of these Shadows? What do they do?

To them fall many tasks, including delighting small children with their antics. But their more beautiful and fearsome tasks, is to make known the heart of humankind. Only in the quiet, only amid the gentle and tranquil flame, can they wield their tools, plying their trade, guiding us to a knowledge of ourselves and others, disrupting what should not be and bringing about what should, fighting with silent weapons against the clamor of activity and harsh light in the evening hours. But I loved the youth who loved her. It was a revelation to him.

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But it was all that was wanted to make the meaning of her forehead manifest—yes, of her whole face, which had now and then, in the pauses of his passion, perplexed the youth. All of it, curled nostrils, pouting lips, projecting chin, instantly fell into harmony with that darkness between her eyebrows. The youth understood it in a moment, and went home miserable. Brandt was born in into a wealthy Anglo-American family in Hamburg.

Raised in Germany, he settled in England in and immediately turned his camera upon his new countrymen. Two books from the s — ' The English at Home ' and ' A Night in London ' — scrutinise the way class hierarchies etched themselves into architecture, dress, and even posture.

The intellectuals at a party in Bloomsbury are marked by their tweedy suits and tense bearing. One slender young man leans on an elbow, hand across his mouth as he pauses to gather a thought; another pulls his shoulders back, directing his intent gaze at the speaker.

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Deep thoughts are being shared. He saw himself as a journalist, a romantic with a clear eye and a brazen lens. Brandt, on the other hand, cared less for individuals than ways of life. He preferred archetypes, and in this he was much more in tune with his German contemporary, August Sander, who methodically catalogued the reigning social order by grouping his finds into categories: The Farmer, the Skilled Tradesman, the Woman and so on. Pratt, the lemon-faced parlour maid, who we see poised to serve dinner in her starched white apron and crinkled cap, was its genius loci.

She remains the enduring model of the British servant, the downstairs goddess of Downton Abbey. Knowing that Brandt was among the diners whom Pratt waited on changes our experience of the photograph, slightly diluting its documentary flavour. He was no disinterested observer, but a theatrical designer, interpreting his own world for public consumption. In another image of the upper classes at play, a woman enjoys a glamorous night at the opera; she is his mother, it turns out.

Brandt felt at home in the crepuscular terrain between fact and fiction, and he composed vignettes like movie stills. Take the smooching couple who, backs turned to the camera, succumb to the knife-edge of the frame. They are friends of his, embracing beneath a sprig of mistletoe that has been cropped out. Eventually, he went looking for ready-made scenes that jibed with his saturnine sensibility. In the depressed northern England of the s he found miners trapped in labyrinthine poverty and windowless houses. A cobblestoned ramp, so wet and slick it looks greased, rears mockingly towards the sky like a mirage of social mobility.

Satanic chimneys spew grit over the rooftops and the tiny children playing below. Brandt disavowed any political motivation.