In St. Petersburg, the State Center of Photography "ROSPHOTO" an exhibition of photos of Brass

• 

in the National Center of Photography "ROSPHOTO", in Exhibition Hall Yard building (St. Petersburg, Bolshaya Morskaya str., 35) an exhibition Brass (Brassaï) «Paris by Night", prepared jointly with the French Institute in St. Petersburg.

***

Eye of Paris

He carried on living his own name, rather, pseudonym as standard. Brassaï, whose real name is Gyula Halas, born in 1899 in Brasov (Hungarian Brasso), in Romanian Transylvania, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From his childhood he dreamed of France: its language and culture much to tell her father - a teacher of French.

from his first trip to Paris, Brassaï came so full of vivid impressions, which had vowed to return there forever. The plan has prevented realized the First World War: he, like all the fight in the armies of the enemy, was denied entry into France.

After demobilization Brassaï goes for art education in Budapest, and then in 1921, moved to Berlin, where he continued teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts, doing drawing, painting and sculpture. Inquisitive mind and a special feeling of friendship quickly made him popular in the Berlin circle of avant-garde artists, which included Wassily Kandinsky , Oskar Kokoschka, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Lajos Tihany.

three years spent in Berlin, were a time not only apprenticeship, but also their own creative quest in the figure (mostly nudes) and they only strengthened the Brass in the desire to devote himself to art. To implement this vision, as I thought Brassaï, it was only possible in Paris. Arriving there in January 1924, he wrote his parents that he feels in total harmony with the city and examines how Paris lives and moves and how people move in it ».

Brassaï convinced that here will reveal all of his talents. At this time, he lives a very busy life: in order to overcome the language barrier - is deeply involved in French, to make a living - draws cartoons for French and German newspapers, and periodically collaborates with Austrian, Hungarian and Romanian editions as a reporter and an artist. Occasionally, he even carries out orders of rich patrons, but all these occupations he considered a waste of time, moreover, without contributing to a serious income.

the evenings Brassaï enthusiastically plunges into the life of the left bank of the Seine - the world of artists, intellectuals, immigrants, adventurers and women of the demi-created the legend of Montparnasse. Late one evening in the company of his fellow countryman André Kertész (or Salvador Dali and Georges Ribsam-Dessenya) he goes to the restaurant "La Cupola" and then, towards the morning - in the Rotunda, where he continued launched on the eve of talks with Nancy Coonardoo, Man Ray , Kiki and Henry Miller. Under these conditions, and is born the idea of the project "Paris by Night».

The fact that the editors with whom Brassaï worked, demanded to accompany stories photos. First, he appealed for help to fellow photographers, but then he began photographing. Very quickly he felt the frustration of one function only illustrative photographs. By 1929, when the press began its first images, Brassaï realized that photography allows him to receive such an aesthetic pleasure, which he can never be achieved by pursuing painting.

His memory is kept Images unknown in Paris, has already captured aging Eugene Atget. But unlike Atget, boyavshegosya not have time to make maiden conceived and behind the camera with the first rays of the sun, Brassaï under the influence of fellow Surrealists also tends to all unusual, different, and prefers to shoot the night life. In search of reality, it follows Atget, but at the same time trying to turn in his own words, the reality in the surreal, looking in the dim light of lanterns unusual, unknown, despised by all Paris. Brassaï "taking lessons" from the darkness, making long walks alone or in society, Henry Miller, Blaise Cendrars and Leon-Paul Farga from Montparnasse to Montmartre. It retrieves from the shadows of images of outcasts - prostitutes, thieves, and turns the strict classic Parisian architecture in a grotesque scene, and records the extraordinary beauty of the blurry silhouettes, blinding light lamps and fog over the Seine.

By 1932 his album, includes 64 photographs, was ready. These pictures were a revelation, because no one photographer to the Brass did not dare to build their work on a play of darkness, shadows and penumbra, on the one hand, and the dazzling flashes of light - on the other.

Success The album was an instant and made a permanent employee of Brass's most prestigious art reviews and respectable fashion magazines. Now he shoots for publications such as Verve and Minotaure, the pages of which were published a series of photographs of coral "sculpture" which won rave reviews Salvador Dali and Andre Breton. At the same time began long-term cooperation Brass as a photographer and reporter with Caramel Snow, the famous editor of fashion magazine Harper's bazaar.

At the same time, the publisher Eugene Verve Teriad introduces Brass with Pablo Picasso. Both artists have quickly found a common language, and Brassaï, gambling in a dialogue with other creative person, begins to withdraw the work of Picasso. The fruits of this collaboration, which lasted until 1960, will work "Sculptures of Picasso" and "Conversations with Picasso," which was published the most famous photograph of the maitre, made in his workshop. The trust between them was mutual, and is a strong feeling that trust is felt in the dialogue quoted Brassau in the book "Conversations With Picasso" (1964); here blames Picasso Brass that he no longer works in painting:

- You have a gift, and you do not use it. There can be no photo to satisfy you fully. It forces you to complete self-denial!

- I like this submission. There are eyes, but not the hand, do not need to touch the objects ... (Brassaï, Conversation avec Picasso, Editions Gallimard, 1964).

This conversation nonetheless forced Brass follow the advice of an older friend, and do, in addition to photographs, paintings, drawings, sculptures and even film : for his short film "So long as there are animals, he won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1955.

Brassaï, of course, was a man of deep convictions, and, as anyone who has endured the horrors of war and occupation, especially acutely aware of the fragility of human life. He begins an unexpected and requires isolation work to create housing Parisian graffiti - these mysterious characters left long ago consigned to people, traces of human hand, victorious oblivion. He reads other people's lives in the inscriptions on the walls, stops tender look at a declaration of love carved on trees in parks, recreates the history of the world by the inscriptions on the walls of barracks and factories. Brassaï even invented their own classification of these inscriptions: the birth of man, life, love, death, animals, magic ... Output in 1960 album Graffiti, who had a huge success, and exhibitions in different countries around the world following the publication did not put an end to this quest. Brassaï persists remove graffiti, as if to perform a duty to humanity.

Summing up his career, shortly before his death he drew up a list of 30 best works, the most recent of which was "Unknown Paris 1930 ", dedicated to Henry Miller, and the" Artists in my life ».

Henry Miller, who called the Brass" Eye of Paris ", wrote of him later:" After a few hours spent with him, give the impression you sifted through a huge sieve, leaving the bottom of just what is the glorification of life ».

Agnes de Guvon-Saint-Cyr

Source: rosphoto.org