Factory fiction

Bill Brandt is often hailed as one of Britain's greatest lensmen, despite the fact that he was born in Germany, choosing England as his adopted country much later. He retained 'the piercing eyes of a foreigner' in a body of work that ranges from stark realism to surrealism. This exhibition cherrypicks his portraits, landscapes, nudes and photojournalism.

Most pertinent are his photo essays on the industrialised North of England, published frequently in Picture Post and Liliput when photographers had the luxury of vast amounts of editorial space. A miner, still black from coal dust, tucks into his evening meal; his wife looks worriedly on but the beauty is in the details of the interior.

Brandt's strength lay in his ability to cut across all social classes and there's Bill Brandt an inherent wistfulness of a certain Englishness in decline. Though considered a social documenter, Brandt often set his scenes up using family, friends and props and, like his contemporaries in pulp fiction, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, used fiction to probe social inequality and discontent.

The policeman standing in a dark alley and the lovers entwined in Late Night In London were shot using the newly available flash bulbs and expose a fascination with film noir. His torn landscapes are equally moody with characteristically dark tones adding drama. But what makes Brandt's work endure is its completeness; he didn't only create pictorial beauties of pure vintage; he had something to say.