The Secret Paris of the '30s

THE BIG PICTURE: A gorgeous new paperback edition of the Hungarian photographer Brassaï's classic photographic memoir. Here are his photos of the pre-war City of Light's verboten nighttime haunts. The accompanying text, also by Brassaï, is stylish, funny, and riveting.

THE DETAILS: Brassaï's nocturnal wanderings were greeted suspiciously by the Paris police. "In those days, no one had heard of night photography," he writes. "The police refused to believe that anyone might want to take pictures by the canal at 3 a.m., and were more inclined to think I had been dumping a body into the greenish water." Brassaï's vision of Paris had much in common with those of Henry Miller (a friend) and Stendhal: a haunted, deranged, dangerous, splendid city. These pictures convey it as such. Its sinners and its places of sin, its bordellos, prostitutes, bums and madwomen (check out the picture of old La Môme Bijou, multiple rings on every finger, and more eye make-up than should be legal), its bums and lovers, its cesspool cleaners who after a night of work "dug into their meal of cheese and sausages with great gusto, not even bothering to wash their hands." An absolute masterpiece from the golden age of photography.

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