Brassaï’s moody, romantic photographs of Paris captured the character of the city at night. His groundbreaking book Paris de Nuit (Paris by Night) included photographs of sex workers, street cleaners, and other working-class people. The book was among the first to explore nighttime photography, thanks to the distribution of electric streetlights.

Born Gyula Halász in Hungary in 1899, Brassaï came to Paris in 1923 to work as a journalist. In addition to nighttime street scenes, he photographed friends and contemporaries. These included notable artists such as Henri Matisse and Alberto Giacometti. Influenced by surrealism and Dada, Brassaï experimented with photomontage and collage to produce his abstract Transmutations series.

Brassaï’s evocative, emotionally stirring photographs won him international fame. In 1948, he was recognized with a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He died in 1984.