Untitled Photography by Henri Brassai: His Secret Paris - Weekly Discussion #19

aplumpton · April 3, 2014

Brassai was a great and natural observer of mankind. The first link provided by Fred is a wonderful photo. The two gay men are fully embraced by the dance and themselves, exuding a grace and energy that is contrasted by the positions of the two other couples, one who is fixed on the photographer's lens in a somewhat cold stare, while rigidly holding his partner, while the other seems not very involved in the dance, symbolised perhaps by the man and his less formal country wool cap and the woman looking offside. The nude woman is also shot naturally, matter-of-factly, honestly, and the night scenes are very Parisian, dark (question of street lighting and the dark cobblestone and stone walls) although not different than what can be seen today more in the outer "arrondissements" than in the more highly lit central districts, except in some enclosed parts not affected by the mid 1800s re-engineering of the streets and boulevards. Narrow streets and minimal night lighting also give a somewhat claustrophobic and tense feeling to night photos in old stone built cities.

I wish many more of those hundreds or thousands of photographers on Photo.Net would take the time to react to the photos in this weekly discussion and benefit from it. Other than the importance of reflecting on one's own approach, aspirations, results and difficulties in photography, this is a next best personal exchange of impressions of what we see, a motivator of thoughts on the power of images, and a chance to gather insight into what makes some photos successful.

jimadams · April 4, 2014

<a href="http://www.americansuburbx.com/wp-content/gallery/brassai/5532448040_f6512870b9_b-custom.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">THIS PHOTO</a> suggests to me the normalization and openness, the loveliness, of something that at the time would more often have remained hidden, and still does to this day in many quarters.

</blockquote>

That's the photo I intended to use as the jumping off point of this discussion, but couldn't get the link to work. Then when I looked for the photo again, I couldn't find it, period.

Thanks, Fred.

jimadams · April 4, 2014

...just someone taking some photos.

Happy snapper.

</blockquote>

If Brassai was "just someone taking photos", I seriously doubt his work would have been exhibited in museums and galleries all over the world. I also doubt there would have been so many collections of his works published in book form.

And what, pray tell, is a "happy snapper"?

</blockquote>

Norma Desmond · April 4, 2014

<a href="http://www.americansuburbx.com/wp-content/gallery/brassai/5532448040_f6512870b9_b-custom.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">THIS PHOTO</a>

That's the photo I intended to use as the jumping off point of this discussion . . .

</blockquote>

I love a little serendipity, Jim.

I've been thinking about that photo for a while and find I'm drawn to it more because of content than because of photographic qualities or style. Content is obviously important and Brassai recognized that and does a nice job with this photo. I think Brassai's body of work elevates this photo and don't know that I'd feel as drawn to it if it were an isolated photo like I am to some of the others. I'm not sure it has, for me, the same photographic heart as some of the others I've been coming back to.

For comparison's sake, I look at <a href="http://www.americansuburbx.com/wp-content/gallery/brassai/5532459762_0de6ee4f13_b-custom.jpg">THIS PHOTO</a> of a man and woman dancing. In the photo of the two men, first of all it's a bit uncanny how alike they look. [What if it's not only gay but incestuous to boot! . . . just kidding.] Their dance is not really otherwise accompanied by a gesture between them like the one of the man and woman. The sensual capture of the woman's back in the backless dress on the left and the motion blur of the guy on the right seem to be photographic gestures that nicely support the endearing gesture of the man leaning into the woman's face. The male/female dance photo seems warmer to me and like a lot is coming together in one instant.

As I look through Brassai's work more carefully, I tend to be more taken with the outdoor shots. He seems to capture that atmosphere and mood that gets to me. When photographing people from behind and in the outdoors, he portrays such ambiance, atmosphere and, though perhaps not the individual identities of those he photographed, certainly a sense of their humanity and of their living and being in place. There's an indirectness that provides, for me, mystique. And the sense of the photographer being more hidden, in the shadowed recesses, also comes through to me and I find it drawing me in.

<a href="http://www.masters-of-photography.com/images/full/brassai/brassai_prostitute.jpg">THIS PHOTO</a> and <a href="http://25.media.tumblr.com/aaadbd20f64c0611db05cc854bf1c2bf/tumblr_mf7wblKOZ31rw3fqbo1_1280.png">THIS PHOTO</a> are good examples, I think, of this latter type. And, interestingly, I think many of his nighttime outdoor photos without people have a very human (or humanistic) feel to them.

lex_jenkins · April 4, 2014

"And what, pray tell, is a "happy snapper"?"

</blockquote>

<a href="/photodb/folder?folder_id=1052845">Me</a>, at the local Main Street arts festival coming up this month, and pretty much any time I get a chance to play the flaneur downtown. I take snapshots - literally - and it's fun. So I'm a happy snapper. Few of Brassai's photos feel like detached snapshots to me. They aren't products of the unengaged observer, the hunter/gatherer street photographer of the Winogrand persuasion. As a longtime theater buff and former director, I see a lot of theatricality in Brassai's photos. Not theatrical in the sense of camp or melodrama. As Brassai himself claimed, he may not have posed his subjects... but he darned sure knew the stage, set, props and characters very well, and the actors were at ease with him. Very rarely did a Brassai character break the fourth wall and play to the director (the photographer) or the viewer/audience. They played their roles - essentially, themselves - extemporaneously, for themselves and, if the cliches about Parisian culture are also true, then also for the badauds. Brassai observed and recorded these impromptu short plays. His gift was not that he was *of* those settings, nor was he one of them. But he was fully with them, engaged in their lives in those moments, observing and recording them with empathy, without condemnation, coercion, exploitation or bias of any kind.

Norma Desmond · April 4, 2014

I see a lot of theatricality in Brassai's photos. Not theatrical in the sense of camp or melodrama. As Brassai himself claimed, he may not have posed his subjects... but he darned sure knew the stage, set, props and characters very well . . .

</blockquote>

Thanks for these observations, Lex. Really helpful to read them. Thinking a little more about "pose." He may not have posed his subjects, but he was often in tune with when they seemed to be adopting a pose worth photographing (even if they weren't "posing" for him either). He was in tune with what looked like a pose and often snapped the shutter at a moment when there seemed to be one.

Mark Z · April 4, 2014

I think part of what makes Brassai's photos successful, especially his Paris at Night photos, is an element of novelty or exoticness. Most people's experience did not include mingling with the people he was photographing. To look through the window he provides satisfies our curiosity (from a safe place) about unfamiliar cultures. In this regard, his photos are similar to many in National Geographic.

In the photo of two men dancing, it is still something that is uncommon enough to cause us to linger a bit with it. To the other couples in the photo, the sight of men dancing together is apparently not as interesting as other goings-on (the guy on the right seems to be more interested in Brassai and his camera). Familiarity seems to breed indifference.

Even though the specifics of the photo may not apply to the majority of people, there are things there that most can identify with - being in love, dancing to good music, having a good time - which may also contribute to the photo's success. So, it's different enough that it captures our interest, but familiar enough that we can also identify with it.

Landrum Kelly · April 5, 2014

People being themselves. . .

You can't beat that.

--Lannie

AJHingel · April 5, 2014

""His gift was not that he was *of* those settings, nor was he one of them. But he was fully with them, engaged in their lives in those moments, observing and recording them with empathy, without condemnation, coercion, exploitation or bias of any kind.""

Very well said. I think this is very right. He used this skill of his, also in his shots of artist friends (<a href="http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Desire-cast-1941.jpg">see this one of many of them, posing, in 1941</a>) among which especially Picasso, and the bourgeoisie <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JONNw44XV0g/UyJZUyS7BoI/AAAAAAAADqE/hwOzCILeFDs/s1600/Brassai.jpg">like in this one</a>, which however is less "spontaneous than those shown from "night life" of cafées.

He was a flaneur in the nightlife of Paris, coming back numerous times when he had found a good scene.

I'm sure that if Brassaï's photos are liked and admired it is mainly because they are very human and many people can connect and identify. What people connect to is however maybe just "Paris at night" in the 30's and 40's, more than with individual people and situations of the photos. If this is right, then Brassaï succeeded in his endeavour of documenting the cities as he saw it and discovered it.

Despite the fact that many of these scenes of Paris have disappeared, much is still there and could be shot at any time by a photographer with the eye (they are few!) when the time and weather is correct <a href="http://www.jimlepariser.fr/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/brassai54beautifullepontneuf-11-485x580.jpg">like this</a>, <a href="http://blackmodular.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/2369477357_b46d5d13e4.jpg">or this</a>, <a href="http://www.atgetphotography.com/Images/Photos/BRASSAI/brassai11.jpg">and even this</a>, <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XfVR_SG6Cvg/TkVg4PkMFaI/AAAAAAAANeo/e69h37UG5Vc/s1600/MarcelBovis%252BBuvetteOBRisset%252B1934%252BMediatheque-Paris.jpg">or this</a>, <a href="http://uploads1.wikipaintings.org/images/brassai/staircase-in-the-rue-rollin-1934.jpg">or this</a>, <a href="http://www.davidkrutpublishing.com/dkp/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/311d_brassai_nuit_de_paris.jpg">or this</a>. Brassaï caught in his photos some of this essence of Paris which makes some come back to the city, over and over again, and many others stay there because of it. Few cities in the world have the spell of Paris.

Julie H · April 5, 2014

In my opinion ...

To the extent that Brassai adhered to the flaneur-essence style of photography (which he often did -- or at least tried to do), I think that he was a thoroughly mediocre, tepidly good photographer.

To the extent that he blew that decorous, thoughtful, "empathetic" model apart, got too close, too fast, too dark, too disordered, he was the progenitor, the breakout man, the first or at least the beginning of much of what is good in today's photography. You often seen his lineage described as passing to/through Brandt to Weegee and thence to all those influenced by the New York School. Do you see "flaneur" or "essence" in Weegee's work? LOL

[And, as an aside, in the referenced photo, are the "two men" men?]

Landrum Kelly · April 5, 2014

Beyond the flâneur, Julie? Surely, and just as surely beyond the mediocre.

The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world "picturesque."—<a title="Susan Sontag" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag">Susan Sontag</a><cite> </cite>

</blockquote>

Categories, categories! The greatness of Brassai lies precisely in the fact that he is so wonderfully difficult, even impossible, to categorize.

[Another aside: Here's to vitality on Photo.net once again.]

--Lannie

AJHingel · April 5, 2014

In my opinion ...

I think Julie has a too restrictive interpretation of what a flaneur is, at least according to its French origin. Baudelaire was the archetype among "flaneur" writers and later on street photographers drawing on their observation of urban life (in Paris). "Going beyond the "strolling" was the obvious intention of them all. BrassaÏ followed that tradition with some success.

It seems to have been the German philosopher, Walter Benjamin, who made the flaneur into a category, based on his analyses of Baudelaire.

Landrum Kelly · April 6, 2014

I cannot imagine two places more different than Paris and Memphis, but I was just looking at a video about Eggleston and his use of a Sony video recorder (which was introduced to him by Andy Warhol). I was astonished at some curious parallels with Brassai in the way he shot people who were living "on the social margins," in spite of all kinds of enormous differences between the lives and works--not to mention subjects--of the two photographers:

<a href="

People are people, in spite of the veneer(s)--whether the people in question are the subjects or the photographers.

Cameras are just cameras, too, I guess, in spite of their own enormous differences.

--Lannie

AJHingel · April 6, 2014

A world of differences for sure, Lannie. I think, however, that what Brassaï was up to was to document the "darker" side of Paris, "Paris by night", unseen by and partly unknown to the bourgeoisie and ordinary Parisians at that time, but not necessarily the social marginality shown in the first half of the video on Eggleston. The most renown of Brassaï's Paris shots, apart from, maybe, those on the prostitutes and the gays, were mainly just the working class men and women enjoying themselves together with other Parisians with the same living conditions. That's why Brassaï's books of 1931 and 32' became popular successes for all who loved the city, as far as I understand and still is popular as the latest show in Paris has shown to all.

Landrum Kelly · April 6, 2014

Well, Anders, I certainly would not want to overstate the similarities, nor to minimize the differences between the two men and their work--or subjects. As for "marginal," I offered two hints that I was not entirely comfortable with using that word. First, I said that many of Eggleston's friends and acquaintances were (in some sense, at least) living on the margin, and not just any old margin, but on the "social margin," a phrase meant to take away any judgment of them while still addressing how they were likely to be perceived by "polite society"--and in the American South "polite society" could and can be a bit too damned polite, even cloying. The second hint was my use of "scare quotes" around the phrase "on the social margins." Eggleston himself had one foot in "respectable" society and another foot in a social stratum that would have seemed to be "beneath" a man of his family's apparent social standing. (Please note that "beneath" is also in scare quotes.) Eggleston finally comes off looking a bit like the Bohemian in one side of his life. I am reminded of one of Rousseau's discourses on inequality (I forget which) in which he romanticized life on the margins--suggesting that artists and intellectuals (including philosophers) could survive on the margins, being perhaps unable or unwilling to change society--and being frequently a bit too willing (my interpretation) to make some kind of accommodation with "respectability" so that they could do the work they felt they had to do, one hopes without being too much of a hypocrite about it. My interpretation of Rousseau was and is very personal, since I was beginning (in the summer of 1969) to be intrigued by the freedom of what I saw of the "Woodstock generation" (on television and in film), viewed from the bowels of southern decadence: South Carolina. (I was born in--holy crap--Charleston.) Having abruptly broken with another bastion of perceived respectability--chemistry and mathematics--in September, 1969, I suddenly encountered the youth culture en masse in Gainesville, Florida the very next year--the same time that i ran into some serious intellectuals at the University of Florida. We all make some kind of accommodation, I suppose, between what we want to do and what we perceive ourselves as having to do.

I have not read about Brassai's accommodation with social perception and social reality, while yet (I presume) engaging in the process of delving into a society that he perhaps secretly envied for its freedom, honesty and openness. Here I speculate wildly, but let me simply say this: bourgeois culture can be horrifyingly limiting across many social milieus. The artist-intellectual in many (most?) of us wants to escape, but, alas, we have to pay the bills--and I do, most of the time.

For some reason, the word that pops into my head at this point is Edward Said's "orientalism," which I read for the first time in Spanish in 2000 as Orientalismo. I guess we all tend a bit to romanticize something, somebody--and for me it moved from being the American youth subculture of the sixties and seventies to leftist social movements on over to Hispanic culture(s) in the eighties, nineties, and beyond. "One foot in and one foot out" has been my accommodation with whatever culture has been my "fascination du jour." I would like to know more about Brassai's accommodation of his own desires to see and perhaps be a part of a "subculture" or "subcultures" that he really was not born into. But I speculate too much here without having done my homework. . . .

P.S.: I loved finding out that Eggleston and Warhol hobnobbed for a while. Holy incongruity! Then again, maybe not quite as incongruous as might appear on the surface.

--Lannie

Landrum Kelly · April 6, 2014

While we're talking "margins," have a look at this masterpiece (and, no, I am not being sarcastic):

<a href="/photo/17706005">http://www.photo.net/photo/17706005</a>

Who are they? What gender(s) are they? Who cares? But what means that demarcation between left and right? I see "margins" and "borders" there. Someone else may see something else. This is a critique forum, after all.

[Gotta love that dog, too.]

--Lannie

AJHingel · April 6, 2014

Lannie, thanks, you are always interesting to read and learn from. Personally I used the term "social marginality" as a sociologist would use it, with no value judgement what so ever, as you would have expected, I believe.

Landrum Kelly · April 6, 2014

Anders, I was just afraid someone might think that I was using it in a derogatory sense.

--Lannie

AJHingel · April 8, 2014

You can never be careful enough in these quarters, I agree !

AJG · April 9, 2014

Just a quick thank you for this thread--I was familiar with a little of Brassai's work before, but have now purchased a copy of the Houston Museum catalog and am looking forward to learning a lot more.

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Untitled Photography by Henri Brassai: His Secret Paris - Weekly Discussion #19

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