Brassai

In the 1930s Paris was brimming with life, and Brassaï and Picasso were there to make the most of it—Brassaï portraying the city’s boulevards and gardens, shops and markets, intellectuals and street life, and Picasso galvanizing its art culture with his innovations. The two of them quickly became fast friends. For Brassaï (1899–1984), the many contrasts and contradictions of Paris were a source of endless fascination, from its various underworlds to the liveliness of its bohemia. He prolifically documented his numerous artist and writer friends, such as Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Genet—and Picasso, whom he first met in 1932 and whose sculptural work he was the first to photograph.
This volume compiles Brassaï’s richly resonant and much-loved black-and-white portraits of this golden era, with a focus throughout on his many images of Picasso at work and at play. It includes a text by Henry Miller that provides a flavor of this astounding era.

This sumptuous Brassai overview gathers outstanding prints of his finest and most popular photographs, drawing on the Estate Brassai in Paris and the collections of leading museums in France and the United States. The work is organized into 18 thematic groupings, such as “Paris by Night,” “Portraits” and “Self-Portraits,” “Body of a Woman,” “Graffiti,” “Places and Things,” “Pleasures” and “The Street,” focusing throughout on his celebrated depictions of 1930s Paris.

When Brassai took up photography in the late 1920s, after his move to Paris in 1924 (from his native Brassov in Austria-Hungary, via Budapest and Berlin), the photobook was blossoming as a new art form ripe for exploration. Brassai gave the genre one of its undisputed classics, Paris de nuit (1933)—the first in what is now a long line of photobooks portraying cities by night. The book was popular with both cognoscenti and tourists, and made Brassai famous; he became the first great chronicler of the urban underbelly, with images of prostitutes, gangsters, brothels and night clubs.

Today Brassai is canonical, and easily one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, as this 368-page volume—the most beautifully produced and edited survey of his accomplishment in print—amply attests.

Born Gyula Halász, Brassai (1899–1984) began his career as a sculptor, painter and journalist, forming friendships with artists and writers such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Jacques Prévert, Henri Michaux and Henry Miller, most of whom he later photographed. Brassaï published numerous great photobooks throughout his career, including Voluptés de Paris (1935), Henry Miller: The Paris Years (1975) and Artists of My Life (1982). The George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, the Art Institute in Chicago and The Museum of Modern Art in New York have all held retrospectives of his work.