PUBLISHED: 1933, Arts et M’tiers Graaphiques,Paris
SIZE: 250×190 mm
PHOTOGRAPHS: 62 b&w
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Paris de Nuit
Printed in sublime gravure in Paris de Nuit Brassaï‘s photographs chronicling the nochturnal milieu of Paris in the 1930s remain some of the most influential images for photographers venturing out into the urban night.
A child of Hungarian Transylvania, Brassaï (b. Gyula Halász, 1899-1984) was an abstract painter turned journalist, who under the influence of Eugène Atget and André Kertész became a photographer on his way to becoming a sculptor.
“I was inspired to become a photographer by my desire to translate all things that enchanted me in the nocturnal Paris I was experiencing” Brassaï later wrote.
Beginning and ending with the cobble stones that paved the boulevards and alleys of the French capital Paris de Nuit takes the reader through a performance where the architecture and street lights are stage sets, and an exotic array of idle and industrious Parisians are the players.
Working on a folding 6×9cm Voigtländer Bergheil plate camera Brassaï used time exposures to reveal dream like scenes of the River Seine and views from Notre Dame. For his real life actors he employed the harsher light of the newly available flash bulb which had to be fired independently from the camera, something Brassaï turned to his advantage in creating dramatic side-lit portraits of prostitutes and street gangs.
To record life in the city’s less penetrable clubs and societies Brassaï first secured an entrée with an introduction from a friend or acquaintance and then hung around until his face became familiar. Once accepted he could begin his work.
When photographing on the streets he carried a number of prints in his pocket to prove to the disbelieving that photography in the dark was possible. In the early 1930s no one had heard of the concept of night photography, and the police needed convincing that what he was up to by the canal at three a.m. was not dumping a body into it’s murky green waters.
Brassaï found a more comfortable working environment in the formalised institution of the upmarket brothels, which were often owned by respectable families (and remained a vestige of the belle époque of Toulouse-Lautrec until they were all closed down in a fervour of post-war piety in 1946).
In the rough volatile underworld of dives and back streets Brassaï had a tougher time, suffering two broken cameras, a lifted wallet and some 23 stolen plates. Yet in spite of the hazards his images of hoods, pimps and gangsters are as direct and clear as those taken in the brothels, the Folies-Bergères or on the banks of the Seine.
Paul Morand’s introduction to Paris De Nuit begins with the words “La nuit n’est pas le négatif du jour – the night is not the the negative of the day,” meaning that it is something other.
For the Brassaï the Transilvanian, the Parisian night revealed not just another facet of the city but another world, a enthralling world closer to Dostoevsky and Nietzche than to French writers Hugo and Baudelaire, a world of outsiders living outside of convention, convicts who created their own laws, a world different and a world that was to be lost for good within a few short years.
Like all great books Paris de Nuit succeeds on many levels. It is not just a record of a lost and sometimes dangerous way of life, the photographs dignify who or what is documented into types and so never appear dated. And at the same time it presents the romance of a city that has a special place in the hearts of most who know Paris, a city loved by photographers, and haunted by photographer’s ghosts.
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About Brassai
Brassaï (Gyula Halász)French, 1899-1984
Brassaï was the pseudonym of Gyula Halász (1899-1984), a Parisian photographer.
Gyula Halász was born on September 9, 1899, in Brassó (Brasov), in SE Transylvania - which today belongs to Romania but then it was part of Hungary. At age three, his family moved to live in Paris, France for a year while his father, a Professor of Literature, taught at the Sorbonne. As a young man, Gyula Halász studied painting and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest before joining a cavalry regiment of the Austro-Hungarian army, serving until the end of the First World War. In 1920 Halász went to Berlin where he worked as a journalist and studied at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Academy of Fine Arts.
In 1924 he moved to Paris where he would live the rest of his life. In order to learn the French language, he began teaching himself by reading the works of Marcel Proust. Living amongst the huge gathering of artists in the Montparnasse Quarter, he took a job as a journalist. He soon became friends with Henry Miller, Léon-Paul Fargue, and the poet Jacques Prévert.
Gyula Halász's job and his love of the city, whose streets he often wandered late at night, led to photography. He later wrote that photography allowed him to seize the Paris night and the beauty of the streets and gardens, in rain and mist. Using the name of his birthplace, Gyula Halász went by the pseudonym "Brassaï," which means "from Brasso." As Brassaï, he captured the essence of the city in his photographs, publishing his first book of photographs in 1933 titled "Paris de nuit" ("Paris by Night"). His efforts met with great success, resulting in his being called "the eye of Paris" in an essay by his friend Henry Miller. In addition to photos of the seedier side of Paris, he also provided scenes from the life of the city's high society, its intellectuals, its ballet, and the grand operas. He photographed many of his great artist friends, including Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, plus many of the prominent writers of his time such as Jean Genet, Henri Michaux and others.
Brassaï's photographs brought him international fame leading to a one-man show in the United States at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, the Art Institute in Chicago, Illinois, and at New York City's Museum of Modern Art.
In 1956, his film, Tant qu'il y aura des bêtes, won the "Most Original Film" award at the Cannes Film Festival and in 1974 he was made Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters and given the Legion of Honor in 1976. Two years later, in 1978, he won the first "Grand Prix National de la Photographie" in Paris.
As well as a photographer, Brassaï was the author of seventeen books and numerous articles, including the 1948 novel Histoire de Marie, which was published with an introduction by Henry Miller. His Letters to My Parents and Conversations with Picasso, have been translated into English and published by the University of Chicago Press.
Considered by all as one of the great photographers of the 20th century, Gyula Halász died on July 8, 1984 in Eze, Alpes-Maritimes, in the south of France and was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.
In 2000, an exhibition of some 450 works by Brassaï was organized with the help of his widow, Gilberte at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
