Brassaï

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Brassaï

Photographs by Brassaï -pseudonym for the French photographer Gyula Halász (1899-1984)- evoke the artistic and intellectual world of the Paris of the thirties. Born in Hungary, Brassaï arrived in the French capital in 1924. He worked as a journalist and from there moved into photography.

His first pictures appeared just as Surrealism was taking root in France. Photography played a major role in Surrealist literature: it was an intrinsic part of the text, not only illustrating it, but favoring the split of the poetic personality both into subject and object.

Paris intellectuals soon became interested in Brassaï’s photographs and he began collaborating with them on work that appeared in such publications as Minotaure, Labyrinthe, Verve and others. From these contacts came his photographs taken in the studios of the leading artists and writers of the time: Picasso -who was captivated by Brassaï’s photographs of his sculptures-, Matisse, Miró, Giacometti and many others -and specific projects in collaboration with Salvador Dalí and André Breton.

Although Brassaï always denied that he was a Surrealist, his links with the movement were significant. His 1930s photographs of a secret Paris by night share the Surrealists’ fascination with the city, the magic of night and the dream world. His series of Paris graffiti inevitably recall automatism and the cadavres exquis, revealing his particular interest in the wonders of found objects and the primitive world, both of which were among the favorite subjects of Breton’s group.

Despite their obvious connections with Surrealism, Brassaï’s photographs are rooted in a realist tradition which was absolutely alien to the Surrealists. Without ever resorting to purely documentary photography, Brassaï captured the atmosphere of a particular moment or era, reflecting Pierre Mac Orlan’s idea of the “social fantastic”. His photographs of outcast characters of the Paris by night are a good example of this: these poetic depictions of his subjects demonstrate that Brassaï was not a journalistic photographer but a poet with a camera. The exhibition contains 150 photographs and is divided into three major sections. The first consists basically of the photographs Brassaï took for the journal Minotaure; the second is made up of photographs taken during his nocturnal strolls in the Paris of the 1930s; and the third includes the photographs of Paris graffiti and the cliché-verre series entitled Transmutations. Two smaller sections, devoted to daytime views of the city and artists’ and writers’ studios, complete the exhibition.