Nocturnal Animals: Brassaï in ‘The City of Light’
A creature of the night, Hungarian photographer Gyula Halász, more widely known as Brassaï (1899–1984) was one of the first practitioners of nocturnal photography. He formed part of the artistic scene of Paris between the two world wars. Brassaï was eclectically influenced by Surrealism, Italian Baroque, and French Realism. Although his photographs cannot be classified as belonging to any single art movement, the qualities they share with Surrealism and Realism bring to mind the debates around photography’s dual nature — is it documentary, is it aesthetics, or is it both? The unprecedented way in which Brassaï harmonized these, as well as his ability to dramatize even the most mundane of subjects, anticipated and marked the transition between the age of modernism and the era of mass-media culture.
In his seminal essay, ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ Baudelaire coined the term flâneur, to designate the twofold nature of the modern artist as a self-aware wanderer, who nonetheless aspires to blend in with the crowd. The painter that Baudelaire had in mind was Constantin Guys and it was his work, that Brassaï identified as the precedent for his own photographic explorations. Associating himself with the French modernist tradition of the 19th century, Brassaï did more than simply conjure up the obvious links between his method as a photographer and the concept of the flâneur. Rather, he evoked the nostalgic view of an older Paris, which was characteristic of the period’s feeling of cultural degeneration and the instability of the attempts for its reinvention. Still, I subscribe to a more romanticised idea of his photographs. Take this verse by Oliver Wendell Holmes (from his poem The Flâneur):
As up the star-lit stairs I climb, And still the widening view reveals In endless rounds the circling wheels That build the horologe of time.
I believe Brassaï ‘s images still resonate with the chimes of such an horologe of time.
Fascinated by the spectacle that went on in the many Parisian cabarets, bars, and cafes, Brassaï interpreted it in a distinctly novel way. Deeply affected by Italian Baroque with its taste for the irrational and the theatrical, Brassaï understood it as a stylistic development, which brought about new possible directions in art. His treatment of the Parisian night-time spectacle through a signature use of intense contrasts is one way in which he implemented the Baroque sensibility into his work. It is also this sensibility, which links Brassaï’s work to Surrealism. Repetition, emphasis on texture and surface, undulating movement, reflections, mirrors, excess; all are elements of a baroque perspective.
Brassaï cannot be classified as a Surrealist photographer per se, as he embraced not so much the movement’s tenets, but its ways of perceiving the world and interpreting it. The typically Surrealist intention to present familiar subjects in unfamiliar ways in order to rid oneself of cultural prejudices and limited perceptions is evident in Brassaï’s work. He is making strange—defamiliarising the cityscape by revealing its nocturnal face. Paradoxically, darkness unearths a different layer of urban reality. It is not a coincidence that Henry Miller nicknamed Brassaï ‘the Eye of Paris’. As such, the photographer had ‘normal vision’, which meant the ability to see beyond the appearances of things, stripping away the veil of pretense and perceiving reality as it is, raw. The direct and honest air of some of Brassaï’’s photographs (such as the famous Bijou), where the subjects react to the photographer’s presence, brings Miller’s words to mind.
The first of Brassaï’s photobooks, Paris de Nuit (Paris Nocturne), 1932 brought him immediate recognition. This was not, however, due to any novelty of the theme he treated, as there was already a prolific literate tradition of representing Paris at night (in Balzac, Proust, and Baudelaire, to name a few), but it was rather due to the specificity of Brassaï’s Paris. The sixty-four photographs exhibit a particular dialectic between private and public, open and closed, accessible and inaccessible which is interpreted through dramatic use of light and shadow. One way in which this is made apparent is by the common use of barriers such as gates and fences; they block the clear view of various public spaces. However, these barriers also form part of Brassaï’s larger affinity for the stylistic effects of different textures, such as ironwork, cobblestones, and grids, inspired by the Bauhaus. Baroque theatricality comes to the fore—these are images that require engaged spectatorship.
Brassaï ‘s depictions of Parisian monuments such as the Arc de Triomphe or Notre Dame de Paris, or of cobblestoned streets, of parks and cemeteries are usually seen through the veil of fog, rain or haze, which was his strategic solution to the difficulty of photographing under street lights. He either avoided their direct luminosity completely or made use of atmospheric conditions to reflect, disperse, and mitigate it; this was more than a simple tactical device. It aestheticized and dramatized the photographs by imbuing them with a mysterious, surreal quality, which places his work in the grey area between the documentary and the creative possibilities of photography.
Furthermore, the photographs in Paris de Nuit betray his attempt to remain as neutral as possible, depicting the city’s architectural beauties. Where its inhabitants are photographed, it is always from a distance. This can be attributed to Brassaï’s background as a photojournalist, and to his initial understanding of the photograph as a scientific record, mediating the photographer’s objective observations. This view later evolved into the dual notion that photography also allows for artistry, expressed by Brassaï’s comparison of the photograph to a rectangle that requires you to fill it up with ‘white and black spots or colours’.
Brassaï’s flexible idea of the nature of photography is apparent in a later work of his: The Secret Paris, which remained unpublished until 1972. Here the spectacle of public and private has become commonplace, serving as a backdrop to the more intricate play between class and sexual oppositions. In an intimate manner, Brassaï discloses a view of an underground Paris, defined by its marginalities. Who is more nocturnal than prostitutes and clochards? Brassaï photographed them diligently, unknowingly participating in a long history of depicting sexual work and homelessness. At the time, this presented a visual challenge to the values of bourgeois society through a kind of in-your-face approach. After all, early photographers were very much concerned with capturing things deemed important for both the present and posterity.
Brassaï’s photographs are indicative of the instability of the interwar years, mediated in his art by an embrace of various stylistic influences. More than a twentieth-century flâneur, documenting nocturnal Paris, more than a Surrealist divulging an unknown reality, Brassaï’s figure is emblematic of the 1930s search for an artistic vocabulary that would be appropriate for capturing modern experiences. Remember, this was happening in the inter-war years when what was behind was still too recent and what was to come was uncertain. Such a vocabulary could anchor an ever-shifting temporality, but it would remain ruthlessly tinted by an air of doomed nostalgia; we see it reflected in the glimmer of mirrors, bottles, and cobblestones.
NOTES:
Marja Warehime, Brassaï : images of culture and the surrealist observer, Louisiana State University Press | c1996.
Sylvie Aubenas, Quentin Bajac, Brassai: Paris nocturne, Thames & Hudson | 2013