Brassaï

Brassaï walked Paris at night in the early 1930s, often with the writer Henry Miller, and photographed what the daytime city hid: fog round street lamps, cobbles slick with rain, lovers in cafés, prostitutes, bal-musette dancers and workers on the night shift. Long exposures timed by smoking a cigarette, and flash powder for the interiors, gave the pictures their rich blacks and haloed lights. Paris de Nuit of 1932 collected them. His later photographs of graffiti scratched into city walls show the same eye for overlooked surfaces.