Brassaï

Madame Bijou in the Bar de la Lune, 1932

Fog, avenue de l'Observatoire, 1934

"Drawn by the beauty of evil, the magic of the lower depths, having taken pictures for my 'voyage' to the end of night' from the outside, I wanted to know what went on inside, behind the walls, behind the facades, in the wings: bars, dives, night clubs, one-night hotels, bordellos, opium dens. I was eager to penerate this other world, this fringe world, the secret, sinister world of mobsters, outcasts, toughts, pimps, whores, addicts, and sexual inverts."

"In the absence of a subject with which you are passionately involved, and without the excitement that drives you to grasp it and exhaust it, you may take some beautiful pictures, but not a photographic oeuvre."

Brassaï


Florida Museum of Photographic Arts.