Brassai :PARIS AT NIGHT

I found a book in a second-hand shop ‘The Secret Paris of the 30s’, by Brassai. First published in 19333 as ‘Paris de Nuit’ and later in Britain, it is full of remarkable images of Parisian nightlife. Some are daring for their time: he photographed whores, brothels and opium dens.
Brassai was first in Paris in the 1920s, where he lived by night, going to bed at sunrise and getting up at sunset, wandering the city from Montparnasse to Montmartre.
In his book, he said that even though he had ignored and disliked photography before his night wanderings, he was inspired to become a photographer by his desire to translate all the things that enchanted him in the nocturnal Paris he was experiencing.
His text is every bit as fascinating as the pictures – he would go into buildings in areas of Paris not many people would venture into, knock on doors and ask if he could photograph them. Often he would frighten the locals – night photography was so uncommon. ‘But oddly enough, doors were almost always opened to me, and I never got shot at, as might have happened, for disturbing a nocturnal household.’
He admits to being arrested by the police three times – once when they refused to believe anyone might want to take pictures by the canal at 3am. He carried some prints of night shots with him, just to prove it could be done.
He uncovered a secret world, not of just night workers, but of love, vice, crime and drugs. Sometimes treated with suspicion, other times asked to leave a bar or club, Brassai managed to get behind the walls, to see a different side to Paris. He befriended people on inner circles where he could – ‘I hung out, made myself as invisible as I could’. He tried to gain the trust of naturally suspicious people, usually on the wrong side of the law.
Being invisible, capturing the moment in true photojournalistic style was difficult as he was working with plate cameras but whether the shot is posed or capturing a private moment, a view from the attic room or a street scene, Brassai’s images are wonderful and arresting, telling a story we wouldn’t otherwise know.