Brassai: Letters to My Parents [Paperback]

Brassai (Author), Peter Laki (Translator), Barna Kantor (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0226071472 | ISBN-13: 978-0226071473 | Edition: 1

Nicknamed the "Eye of Paris" by Henry Miller, Brassaï was one of the great European photographers of the twentieth century. This volume of letters and photographs, many published for the first time, chronicles the fascinating early years of Brassaï's life and artistic development in Paris and Berlin during the 1920s and 1930s.

"[Brassaï] is probably the only photographer--at least in France--to have acquired such a vast audience and mastered his material to such a degree that he can express himself with a flexibility and apparent ease that is almost literary in its nature."--Jean Gallien, Photo-Monde

"The letters that Brassaï wrote to his parents between 1920 and 1940 chronicle the sometimes painful stages by which this gifted man hauled himself from penury to celebrity."--Peter Hamilton, Times Literary Supplement

"In these proud, protective, occasionally conscience-stricken missives, the young man full of eager dreams emerges as one of the century's pioneering photographers, revered for his lushly atmospheric portraits of Paris after dark."--Elle

"A fascinating insight into how a bright individual slowly found his calling."--Christine Schwartz Hartley, New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

A volume of ebullient missives which track the artist's yearning for self-expression, as well as the details of his thrifty bookkeeping, which staved off starvation and the need to return home. Earnest is the adjective that best describes these bright, readable letters that Brassa‹ (born Gyula Halasz in 1900) sent to his parents over the 20-year time-span of 192040. In 1920 he left Transylvania for Berlin, where he studied drawing at the Academy and wrote articles for the newspapers back home, then moved to Paris, where he eventually earned recognition and a living through the medium of photography. He mingled with both the cosmopolitan and bohemian, including Picasso, who once remarked that Brassa‹ ``owned a gold mine but was exploiting a salt mine'' by choosing photography over the fine arts. Brassa‹--who expresses no regret over his fate--had begun taking pictures for pleasure, but found immediate success when some of his frank, sensual photographs of the city's lively nocturnal existence (he was fascinated, he said in a letter, by the way the city ``lives and moves'') were gathered and published as Paris at Night in 1931. After that life became easier: He was sought out for commissions, and Alexander Korda, spotting Brassa‹'s eye for line and framing, hired him as a cameraman. In the last letters, however, when Brassa‹ had become established and sought after, he sounds unchanged, still diligently noting what he spends on food and rent, offering a sanitized record of his romances, still self-absorbed but humble, and ever- passionate about the world and his travels. The only difference is a sad note of maturity creeping in, prompted by the news that his parents may have to leave their hometown as a result of imminent war. The biographical sketch that emerges here through practical details compensates for the dearth of reflections about art. (37 drawings and b&w photographs, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Hungarian --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 323 pages
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press; 1 edition (December 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226071472
• ISBN-13: 978-0226071473
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #888,480 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars IN HIS OWN WORDS, August 6, 2001

By 

MOVIE MAVEN (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brassai: Letters to My Parents (Hardcover)

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.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lovely book about Paris and Art, February 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Brassai: Letters to My Parents (Paperback)

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.