Following early schooling in Germany and a stay in Switzerland, during which he took up photography, Brandt briefly worked in the Paris studio of the American artist and photographer Man Ray in 1929. In 1931 he returned to England and became a freelance photojournalist, producing a series of photographs depicting the daily life of all strata of English society; they were published as The English at Home (1936). Many of these photographs reveal the influence of Eugène Atget, Brassaï, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, all of whom similarly documented their immediate surroundings. Brandt’s debt to these photographers is also evident in his subsequent collection, A Night in London (1938).