The book was a quick hit, and Brassaï received new commissions for publications ranging from the erotic magazine Scandale to Harper’sBazaar. While his images reflect the glitter and gaiety the city was famous for—the brilliantly lit grand staircase of the Opéra on a gala night, the Eiffel Tower blazing with lights in the shape of shooting stars, cancan girls doing high kicks at the Bal Tabarin, Brassaï also included the grittier side of Paris by night: a row of clochards sleeping under the colonnade of the Bourse de Commerce; an elderly homeless woman dressed in the tattered remnants of her former finery; a ragpicker crouched on the cobblestones, digging through a trashcan. The gradation of tones is wonderfully subtle, describing an apparently infinite range of black and near-black tones.

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 quotes and shortened quotes are from the book and credited as: ©Brassaï: Paris by Night (Flammarion, 2011). He was one of the numerous Hungarian artists who flourished in Paris beginning between the World Wars. The photograph feels surreal, and at the same time her situation speaks of strife, of some form of hardship, of a lonely existence at the edge of night. In one of Brassaï’s most famous photographs, a man and a woman canoodle in the corner of a Parisian coffee house in the early 1930s, smoke curling from a lit cigarette between the woman’s fingers.

Paris by Night, first published in 1933, features sixty-two of these poetic images, and has become an acknowledged classic of urban photography. In 1933 Brassaï published 64 of these scenes in his first book of photographs, Paris de Nuit, which became an immediate hit. Thus, as well as a wonderful collection of very evocative images, the book can act as a reminder of the importance in engaging the intellect to make such images. tall x 10-5/8"; black cover; lamination is lifting from cover; crease along top 6" front cover and light corresponding creases to first 2 pp; ca.

FIRST EDITION OF BRASSAÏ’S MASTERPIECE, ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AND BEAUTIFUL OF ALL PHOTOBOOKS. The images are matte and not particularly contrasty, and I don't think they are shown to their full advantage.