Brassai
(1899 - 1984)
Brassai was born Gyula Halasz, in 1899, in Brasso Transylvania, then a part of Hungary. The pseudonym means "a native of Brasso." His family moved to Paris in 1903-1904. Brassai served in the Austro-Hungarian cavalry in World War I and afterwards briefly attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest.
In December 1920, Brassai moved to Berlin where he bagan a career as a journalist for Hungarian-language newspapers. While in Berlin he studied at the Akademishce Hochschle.
In 1922, Brassai returned to Brasso and moved to Paris in 1924. He was introduced to photography by his friend Andre Kertesz in 1926. Brassai began to take his own photoraphs in 1929, when he could afford to buy a camera, a Voigtlander, and then a Rolleiflex in 1935. Brassai found himself mesmerized by the city at night and began focusing his attention and his camera on deserted areas, buildings, and monuments and on human interaction at all levels of society from the bourgeoisie to prostitues, ruffians, and the poor on the fringes of society. Brassai's images display a sensitive handling of light and atmosphere whether of fog-enshrouded avenues or harshly illuminated bars, and reveal the photographer's keen sense for the moment when gesture and expression add a poignant dimension to the scene. Brassai's reputation was made by the book he published with a non-surrealist press, Arts et Metiers Graphiques, in 1933, titled Paris de Nuit (Paris after Dark). American writer Henry Miller christened Brassai "the eye of Paris," his images epitomized the darkly romantic Paris of the 1930s.
In 1932, Brassai took photographs of Pablo Picasso, his work, and his studio for the first issue of Le Monotaure. Brassai worked on portraits of Picasso for four decades and was much stimulated by their association. Brassai also photographed the great painter Henri Masisse at work in his studio. Offers for exhibitions and magazine assignments followed, and Carmel Snow and Alexey Brodivitch, editors of Harper's Bazaar, hired Brassai to begin a more than twenty-year relationaship with the magazine. Brassai produced photographs for substantial weekly publications, Surrealist and post- Surrealist journals, fashion magazines, and detective and sexually evocative "magazine legers," which were important sources of income for many period photographers and for the promotion of modern photography.
During World War II, from 1943-1945, since working in photography was not possible, Brassai began drawing again and in 1946, he published, Trente dessins, a portfolio consisting mostly of nudes, with a poem by Jacques Prevert written in response to the images. In 1976, Brassai published The Secret Paris of the 30s. This series explored a range of licit and illicit locations of entertainment and pleasure, ranging from high society to fringe establishments, such as opium parlors, bordellos, and homosexual bars. Shortly before his death, Brassai completed Marcel Proust sous l'emprise de la photographie, a study of Proust's interst in photography and the role of photography and photographs in A la recher-eche du temps perdu.
Brassai died in 1984. His work has received considerable scholarly attention, both for his own contributions and his role as part of the Parisian avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, one of the most fertile periods of photographic practice of the century.
