Brassaï

1

(image courtesy of joseflebovicgallery.com)
2

(image courtesy of mudwerks.tumblr.com)
3

(image courtesy of picsicio.us)

Brassaï is my most little known of the three photographers listed: So if only for my benefit a short bio is necessary. "Brassai was the pseudonym of Gyula Halász (1899-1984), a Parisian photographer. Gyula Halász was born on September 9, 1899, in Brassó (Braăov), then part of Hungary but today it belongs to Romania. Gyula Halász's job and his love of the city, whose streets he often wandered late at night, led to photography. He later wrote that photography allowed him to seize the Paris night and the beauty of the streets and gardens, in rain and mist. Using the name of his birthplace, Gyula Halász went by the pseudonym "Brassaï," which means "from Brasso." As Brassaï, he captured the essence of the city in his photographs, publishing his first book of photographs in 1933 titled Paris after Dark. His efforts met with great success, resulting in him being called "the eye of Paris" in an essay by his friend Henry Miller. In addition to photos of the seedier side of Paris, he also provided scenes from the life of the city's high society, its intellectuals, its ballet, and the grand operas. He photographed many of his great artist friends, including Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, plus many of the prominent writers of his time such as Jean Genet, Henri Michaux and others."
(biography exert courtesy of www.biographybase.com)

I have chosen my three Brassaï images very carefully, so I can illustrate the similarities Brassaï and Cartier-Bresson share, both of them photographing similar things at a similar point in the development of documentary photography. I also plan to illustrate the influences Clark might have drawn from Brassaï, or the similarities that both works display. Seeing as Clark's peak of his photographic career took place towards the end of both Brassaï and Cartier-Bresson's careers it is highly likely that Clark had been exposed to their work and more likely than not will have drawn influence from them.

1. This image has a very strong voyeuristic element - by way of the nude woman going about washing - and what crucially makes it voyeuristic her turned back and lack of eye contact with the viewer. Its a fairly controversial scene and would have been more so at its time of shooting. The mass public has become vastly desensitized by the nonchalant media treatment of extreme or shocking images hence making this image of a nude woman washing - apparently oblivious to the camera's presence - all the more tame in today's day and age. It is for reasons such as these that it is no surprise to me that this precedes Clark's Tulsa by twenty or thirty years; because as communications strengthen and the public has greater and easier access to more and more media we begin to see the same things more and more, and so it takes more and more to shock us. This makes it quite easy to date photography that deals with explicit content or subjects that cause a stir because the more graphic it is - chances are it's going to have been shot more recently.

2. This style of social observational documentary is very popular, and due to the sheer amount of people that have been attempting to recreate these kind of images (and although this is a classic - perfectly framed, interesting use of the reflection, and reminiscent of a more romantic photographic version of Degas' Absinthe Drinker, 1877. Unfortunately due to the mass attempted reproduction of images of this style it loses some of the charm I can imagine it would have had in the mid 20th century.

3. The final Brassaï image is the one that I feel is most evocative of his style, and most comparable to Cartier-Bresson (out of the images displayed). Both photographers were shooting Paris scenes and attempting to depict it in new and innovative ways. In this case, and many others Brassaï has pulled himself up levels above the rest with his stunning night photography. Perfectly exposed, using the light from cars and street lamps to illuminate the evening's mist he creates an eerie scene that could quite easily be a still from an early black and white horror film.