PechaKucha Photography Research Presentation

9/2/20

Brassaï was born Gula Halász in 1899 in Brassó, Hungary, from where he took his name. Born into a close knit family, Brassaï took inspiration from his artistic father, and emigrated to Berlin to study art making at college.

Brassaï arrived in Paris in February of 1924, and rapidly immersed himself in all spheres of life. He was fascinated and enamored with the history, culture, and art of the city. Through the process of night wandering, Brassaï documented his vision of people and landscape through photography, culminating in his 1933 publication of 62 photographs, Paris by Night. The process of photographing in low light was a technological feat for the 1920’s-30’s. Film was not as sensitive as it is now, so Brassaï would work with long exposures to compensate for the little light available during these hours of the night.

Although Brassaï did not identify as a Surrealist, his work is now considered inextricably linked to Surrealist photography. We see Brassaï’s relationship to Surrealism through his photographs of prominent artists and their studios at the time, such as Picasso and Dali. Brassaï himself also submitted photography to the prominent Surrealist publication Minotaure, and provided photographs to accompany Surrealist texts. Contemporary scholarship documenting Brassaï’s life and work concentrates on the period of the 1920’s-30’s because this was an interwar period in France. This culture that Brassaï documented would soon transform with the rise of WWII.

Brassaï reached a worldwide audience for the first time in 1976, when he published his never-before-seen photographs in The Secret Paris in the 30’s. The theme of secrecy in Brassaï’s work speaks to the setting and subjects of his photography. As a photojournalist for newspapers, intense lover of the city, and habitual night walker, Brassaï photographed people of all walks of life. This includes people who were considered to be marginalized by society, such as night workers, sex workers, and queer people. Brassaï lived an especially social life, and we see that through the hundreds of people he’s photographed.

Brassaï. (1997). Brassai: Letters To My Parents (Vol. Translated from the Hungarian by Peter Laki and Barna Kantor). Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Tucker, A., Howard, R., Berman, A., & Brassaï. (1999). Brassaï: The Eye of Paris.
Houston: Museum of Fine Arts.

Warehime, M., & Reck, R. D. (1998). Brassai: Images of culture and the surrealist observer. Louisiana, Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press.