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The Encyclopedia of Photography’s Art and History

"Paris by Night", Brassaï (1899-1984) | PhotoAnthology

Paris by Night

Brassaï (1899-1984)

Parisian nightlife during the interwar period, capturing the interplay of light and shadow in the city’s streets and social underworld.

With contributions from: Polya Dimitrova (image research); Evdokiya Dimitrova (data research); Elinor Hemedes (data research). Suggest an Edit

Paris by Night

Brassaï (1899-1984)

Parisian nightlife during the interwar period, capturing the interplay of light and shadow in the city’s streets and social underworld.

The concealed lighting
and the surrounding darkness, the soft hiss of a gas-jet and the gentle plash of running water combine to lend a bizarre, imponderable charm
to the stark ugliness of this “Vespasienne”.

An outlook on the nave
and buttresses of Notre-Dame from windows on the lle Saint-Louis.

Tokyo has a Yoshiwara;
Shanghai, its flower-boats; Paris, its “houses of illusion”.

This ancient cocotte, has outlived her seventieth autumn, and looks as if she had stepped out of one of Baudelaire’s most night-marish pages, rejoices in
the name of “Bijou”, and is a familiar figure in the Montmartre cabarets.

Seen from the terrace
of the Automobile Club, the Place de la Concorde looks like a huge and exquisitely wrought
epergne.

On the roofs of Paris, "featured” in a famous film, a motley cavalcade of chimney-pots of every style and period wakens to strange, nocturnal life.

On the calm surface of the Seine tugboats and barges are resting for the night beside Pont-Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris.

Won’t you buy my pretty flowers?” The flower-girls’ tuneful cry echoes through Paris streets. Few cities love flowers or boast such charming shops. Before one, a Parisienne pauses, captivated by flowers as frail and lovely as herself.

An open gutter snakes
across the empty street.

Midnight; the féte is over.

The fantastic activities
of the scavengers are a characteristic feature of
the night-life of old Paris.

A feature of the Paris season, the Bal des Petits Lits Blancs draws all the wealth and fashion of the capital to the
Opéra. Music-hall stars, a galaxy of dancers and singers, scintillate on the famous Silver
Bridge.

At the Bal Tabarin the
“French Cancan” dancers, in all their pristine glory of black silk stockings, frills and furbelows,
“bring down the house” each night.

Under a soft electric
glow quayside trees weave graceful arabesques.

Dedicated to Venus of
the Streets, this narrow passage off the Boulevard de Clichy, near the Gaumont Cinema, proliferates with small hotels.

Under one of the Seine
bridges some of the city’s down-and-outs sit by an al fresco fireside.

In the subdued light of
a “Morris Pillar” Paris offers its various entertainments, with, as usual, Mistinguett writ large.

From autumn to late
spring great sealing fairs regale the various districts of the capital with their lights and hubbub.

In the wings of the Folies-Bergére a troupe of “bathing-beauties” chat and sew placidly, till the curtain rises on a spectacular display of aquatic and looking-glass effects.

A glimpse of the Boulevards at the Place de l’Opéra.

A young prostitute roams between “Sébasto” and Beaubourg, standing at Rue de la Reynie and Rue Quincampoix, once home to financier John Law in Louis XV’s era.

At the Medrano Circus
a trick-rider, darling of the crowd, sits out her ovation.

At frequent intervals
along the streets, gaily lit kiosks display an infinite variety of magazines in every language and to suit all tastes, not omitting the erotic.

This building, lit by the
pale light of a single gas-jet and exhibiting a tricolour flag, is not as one might think a nondescript hovel, but the oldest police -station in Paris.

Another couple of Parisian lovers; on a bench in the Tuileries Gardens, under cover of the darkness, they exchange
interminable confidences.

A stone’s throw from
the revelry of Montmartre, the graveyard, with its tombs and crosses bathed in light, points a melancholy contrast.

In a basement, hermetically closed but for one barred air-hole, a baker, stripped to the waist, feeds the morning’s bread-to-be into his oven.

Meanwhile the spotlights streamline in light the silvery forms of all-but-naked girls, star-scattered in the “Regent’s
Orgy”.

Blazoning the eminence
of Citroén, the Eiffel Tower lights up, framed
in a doorway of the Trocadéro.

Books

Brassai: Paris by Night

Flammarion, 2012

Brassai: For the Love of Paris

Flammarion, 2014

Brassai: Paris

TASCHEN, 2008

The Secret Paris of the 30's

Pantheon Books, 1977

Brassai: The Eye of Paris

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1999

Brassai

Fundación Mapfre, 2018

Brassai: No Ordinary Eyes

Thames & Hudson, 2000

Brassai

Pantheon Books, 1988

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