'When nothing was taboo': 10 intimate images of a lost, decadent 1930s Paris

Moving "effortlessly from slums to exclusive salons", the legendary photographer Brassaï captured the brothels, gay bars and backstreets of Paris's hazy night-time in its radical inter-war years.

4 hours ago
Cath Pound

Brassaï's photographs of lovers in cafes, the gargoyles of Notre Dame and the lamplit streets of Montmartre are some of the most iconic ever produced of Paris. A pioneer of night-time photography, he has shaped the view of the city as a place for romance, forever caught in a hazy twilight world of shadow. "The Paris you dream of, that's Brassaï's Paris," Anna Tellgren, curator of Brassaï: The Secret Signs of Paris at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, tells the BBC.

But there is far more to his oeuvre than the select group of images reproduced on postcards.

Born Gyula Halász in 1899 in Brassó, Transylvania, then part of Hungary, Brassaï began studying art in Budapest in 1918 and continued his studies in Berlin. He arrived in the French capital in 1924, where he embraced the secret nightlife of the city during the interwar years, an era when nothing was taboo. Finding himself instinctively drawn to the city's outcasts, he ventured into balls for homosexuals, gay bars and brothels, portraying their inner worlds with no sense of voyeurism or moral judgement. "He was one of the first who went in there and documented these milieux. It's very early documentation of queer life," says Tellgren.

Brassaï published a selection of his work in Paris de Nuit (Paris by Night) in 1933, which brought him instant fame. Shortly after World War Two, however, restrictive censorship prevented him from publishing his more intimate photographs. He would have to wait until 1976 to publish Le Paris Secret des Années 30 (The Secret Paris of the 1930s). The two books combined offer a fascinating window into a world lost forever. Here we look at 10 of his most evocative images of the city.
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Photos at the link.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260414-10-of-the-most-iconic-images-of-pariss-secret-night-time-world