Paru le 01/03/2001 | Broché 96 pages
Tout public
texte Paul Morand
The city of Paris bewitched Brassaï. Working as a journalist by day, by night he roamed the streets of the capital and visited its bistros, sharing moments in the lives of the prostitutes and peddlers, down-and-outs and illicit lovers who lived on the margins of society. Their nocturnal surroundings fascinated the artist, whose photographs are as much an exploration of the technical challenge of portraying darkness as portraits of a hauntingly dramatic night world. Paris by Night, first published in 1933, features over sixty of these poetic images, and has become an acknowledged classic of urban photography.
Brassaï moved in the same circles as the Surrealists - he met Picasso in 1932, and worked on Le Minotaure, the famous Surrealist review. He retained a very individual creative vision, however, commenting : "The surreal effect of my pictures was nothing more than reality made fantastic through a particular vision. All I wanted to express was reality, for nothing is more surreal." This uniquely modern perspective has inspired a new generation of art critics and historians, and the centenary of Brassaï's birth has been the catalyst for major retrospective exhibitions at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the Hayward Gallery, London.
As part of this tribute, the current long-overdue reissue of Paris by Night brings one of the last century's key photographic works back into print.
Brassaï (1899-1984) is one of the great figures of twentieth-century photography. Born in Brasso, Hungary, he studied at the academies of Budapest and Berlin before moving to Paris in 1924. Initially interested in painting, he turned to photography in the early thirties at the suggestion of fellow Hungarian André Kertész. The publication of Paris by Night was met with immediate critical acclaim. This and subsequent works gained Brassaï recognition as a peerless chronicler of the city, capturing moments in the lives of ordinary Parisians and of leading figures from the world of art and litterature, including Matisse and Henry Miller. His friendship with Picasso, which began in the 1930s, led to the publication of another of Brassaï's major works, Conversations avec Picasso (1965). Brassaï's artistic career, spanning fifty years, also included experiments with sculpture, writing and film.
