Brassai: Letters to My Parents

Rating:
Summary: IN HIS OWN WORDS
Review: Henry Miller called Brassai "the eye of Paris" and indeed he was in all of his wonderful, singular, black and white photographs of the City of Light. Brassai was, no doubt about it, one of the handful of great photographers who worked from 1900 til midpoint in the last century. He tells us that in Paris, he had "an unquenchable thirst for knowledge." Although he did many portraits of the famous like fellow photographer, Andre Kertesz, and exiled president of Hungary, Mihaly Karolyi, and Picasso and the composer, Edgard Varese (reproductions of which are included in this beautifully produced book) and the instantly recognizable monuments and even the graffiti of the city, he was even more well known for his images of the seamier side of Paris-- (known in the USA as "Paris Secrets") the night life which not only included actors and dancers, but also prostitutes and transvestites. (he actually became so well-known and liked in the bordellos, that he was allowed "free-reign" to photograph the women and their clients!)

A Hungarian by birth, he obviously loved all aspects of Paris. This is not only obvious in his art, but also in his writing. From 1920 til 1940, Brassai (born Gyula Halasz in 1899) kept up an almost religiously regular correspondence with his parents. These letters, some like diary entries, show his great affection for his family and home, but also for this extraordinary city in which he chose to live and work.

If you are at all interested in how a great artist finds inspiration and how he continues to grow from day to day, from triumph to triumph and indeed from struggle and disappointment to more struggle and even more disappoinment, these letters will thrill you. I have always been fascinated by Brassai (I own one of his images) and have never been able to find a satisfying biography that tells anything of his early life and history. Well, here is that book and it is in his own words and illustrated with several of his fine photographs. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Rating:
Summary: A lovely book about Paris and Art
Review: This lovely book gives us the portrait of an artist as a VERY unusual young man: the great photographer Brassai. Brassai proves himself a wonderful writer as well as photographer. His love of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s is everywhere evident--the glamour, the grime, the artistic urgency of the place, the crazy characters who called it home. Letters to My Parents is a must-read to anyone interested in this idiosyncratic artist and establishment of photography as an art form in the early twentieth century.