His jacket and her thick sweater suggest winter weather, from which this single, cozy booth offers refuge. As the Paris of these images is that preceding 1933 when the book was first self-published in its original form, they are almost impossible to re-take now; the city has seen too many changes. Roaming Paris streets by night in the early 1930s, Brassa created arresting images of the city's dramatic nocturnal landscape. Indeed, Brassaï wasn’t a native Frenchman, but a Hungarian born in Brassó, Transylvania (in modern-day Romania, which was previously under Austro-Hungarian rule). Before World War II struck the city, he captured foggy avenues with bare trees, the gate to the Luxembourg Gardens, bridges, and street façades.

First American Edition (1987) of a book originally published in France by Arts et Metiers Graphiques in 1933. Paris by Night, first published in 1933, features sixty-two of these poetic images, and has become an acknowledged classic of urban photography. The images are matte and not particularly contrasty, and I don't think they are shown to their full advantage. The current reissue of Paris by Night brings one of the last century’s key photographic works back into print. Brassaï's famous, exquisite portrait of Paris under cover of the night; of humanity as light beaming out of holes punched in the darkness, simultaneously standing out against and hiding within the evening gloom.Beyond such experiences that the book brings, stands the work itself, the effort that Brassaï must have put in to capture such photographs in 1933. When I slowly turn the pages of the 62 duotone photographs this book consists of, based on Brassaï’s original photographic plates, the twilight world slowly draws me into its ‘phantom planes’, and in doing so this world at moments worries me, as If I am with delay soon about to discover something troublesome within its frames. All quotes and shortened quotes are from the book and credited as: ©Brassaï: Paris by Night (Flammarion, 2011). We collect information from our users – this is for administration and contact purposes in connection with contributions you may wish to make to the site or your use of certain site features such as newsletter subscriptions and property enquiries.

Mirrors on either side of the couple’s well-coiffed heads reflect their loving looks and blur the surrounding restaurant. Having tried my hands at night-time photography I never really given full consideration to the fact that the night is not a continuation of the day with different exposure settings, nor is it simply its negative.

Roaming the city at night, he brought his camera along and began to capture the unique flora and fauna of nighttime Paris. Ein wunderbarer Bildband, aus einer Zeit, als Fotografieren noch eine hochkomplizierte Kunst war und Bilder entweder gleich, oder niemals etwas geworden sind. The black-and-white photographs, printed on matte black pages, have a misty, dreamlike, almost magical look, a perfect match for their poetic content.

This new edition gives us the same images and, according to the publisher’s statement, “uses the latest engraving technology to reproduce faithfully the quality of the original photographs”. The survey includes Brassaï’s pictures of street graffiti, female nudes, and his famous friends such as Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí. After the success of his book, 'Paris De Nuit' (1933) he produces a more sanitised vision of nocturnal Paris. Despite his social clout and early professional successes, Brassaï still viewed himself as an outlander of sorts.He was one of the numerous Hungarian artists who flourished in Paris beginning between the World Wars. As a fan of French photography this is a book I just had to have, the pictures are not the highest quality, but considering the type of camera he was using and that they are taken at night the quality is probably what you would expect. 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.