Abstract
Abstract In 1941 Bill Brandt was commissioned by the newly formed National Buildings Record (NBR) to photograph monuments in various English cathedrals and churches as a record against possible bomb damage, a task that he carried out alongside his photojournalistic work until 1943. Although occasionally mentioned in passing, the NBR photographs have rarely been reproduced.1 The principal aim in presenting a selection of them here (see following portfolio) is to bring to light an important dimension of Brandt's wartime work, one that is seldom given due attention in surveys of his career. This is not to suggest that the images presented here are as Brandt would have printed them—it would be invidious to present prints that have been made without the photographer's supervision as definitive of his intentions. This would be particularly so in Brandt's case as much of his creative input occurred in the darkroom. He made this explicit in his 1948 statement in Camera in London:
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