10.07. | The Camera-Phobic Painter Who Conquered Paris at Night with a Single Cigarette

Forget technique. Forget the rules. It's time to discover the artist inside you.

Have you ever wondered how Henri Cartier-Bresson, master of the decisive moment, saw the world? Or how Brassaï felt the pulse of Paris at night? What if, for one month, you could look at the world through their eyes?

This is not an ordinary photography course. It is a ten-month adventure, a journey back to photography's golden age. From September to June, every month we step into the world of a legendary photographer with the help of art historian and museologist Dávid Balogh. We don't simply analyse their pictures: we experience their era, adopt their way of seeing, and create work in their style. Details about the adult education programme are available here.

So let's begin.

Today's hero is Brassaï, the Hungarian-born genius who moved from painting, writing and sculpture to become one of photography's great legends. Meet Gyula Halász, better known by his artist name Brassaï—“the man from Brassó”—and some of the most extraordinary moments in his surreal, light-filled life. Then we'll borrow a few of his tricks for photographing in the dark.

An Artist Who Discovered the Camera Rather Late

Gyula Halász, born on 9 September 1899, was a thoroughly trained artist. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest and spent time in Berlin between 1918 and 1922, where his circle included László Moholy-Nagy, Kandinsky and Oskar Schlemmer.

He arrived in Paris, the City of Light, at the age of twenty-five, primarily working as a journalist. Here's the twist: Brassaï didn't seriously take up a camera until he was around thirty. Why did he switch? The future world-famous photographer became a master partly out of thrift: buying photographs to illustrate his articles simply wasn't economical.

Rivalry and an Artistic Creed

Two major names helped push Brassaï towards the camera:

Eugène Atget: The great documentarian of Paris, who spent decades recording the old city with a large-format wooden camera and left behind an invaluable visual archive.

André Kertész: The photographer who saw potential in the painter, encouraged him and even took him out photographing. Later, as often happens in the art world, Kertész accused Brassaï of borrowing his ideas.

Brassaï's own artistic creed was that photography was not an end in itself but a marvellous tool for capturing the beautiful, strange and extraordinary things that moved him. He was a collector—a collector of images and emotionally charged fragments of life.

Paris by Night and the City's Underworld

Brassaï found the territory that Atget had largely left untouched: nightlife. He walked the city tirelessly, photographing people, deserted streets, intimate encounters and private scenes.

The breakthrough was Paris de Nuit. Published in 1932 with sixty photographs, the book brought him immediate international fame. It was followed by the more explicit Voluptés de Paris (The Pleasures of Paris, 1935), focusing on prostitutes, criminals and nightlife venues. Although successful, Brassaï later distanced himself from the book.

Variety Is the Spice of Life

Later, Brassaï fell in love with walls as well. From 1932 onward he documented the constantly changing graffiti and marks scratched into Parisian surfaces. He also made remarkably elegant, geometric and almost surreal nude studies.

During the Second World War, when street photography was restricted, Brassaï left Paris for safety but returned to rescue negatives he had hidden. During those years he increasingly returned to drawing and poetry.

Brassaï's Photography School: Four “Long” Tips for the Perfect Night Photograph

The work of Brassaï and Atget teaches us as much about technique as it does about subject matter. If you'd like to capture the painterly atmosphere of Paris at night—or your local pub—here are a few lessons from the master, especially for dealing with long exposures.

1. The “Cigarette Timer” — Exposure

Tip: For long exposures—at night, anything around one second or more—you need stable support. Use the Pro mode on your phone or camera, and keep ISO relatively low (around 100–400 where conditions permit) to minimise noise.

2. Melt into the Wall — The Art of Stability

In Brassaï's era a tripod wasn't always practical, so finding absolute stability mattered.

Tip: Look for fixed supports. Don't be embarrassed to place the camera on the ground or brace it against a wall or pillar. This doesn't merely reduce camera shake; it also forces you to compose from a restricted and often more interesting angle.

3. Ghosts and Materiality — Composition

Brassaï loved painterly image-making and embraced a technical limitation of long exposures: moving people could disappear like ghosts or dissolve into blurred marks.

Subject Tip: Concentrate on geometry and texture. Look for wet shining pavements and cobblestones—Brassaï loved the physical quality of surfaces. Use reflections in shop windows and wet asphalt to deepen space and atmosphere.

Light Tip: Play with long, dramatic shadows and diffuse pools of light. To emphasise graffiti or the texture of a wall, use hard raking light, for example from a torch held to one side.

4. Mood-Building Post-production

To bring back the nostalgic, slightly ominous atmosphere of old Paris, don't neglect the final treatment.

Tip: Shoot in colour, then convert to black and white afterwards, or experiment with a restrained sepia tone. That warm brown cast can evoke the nostalgic, old-film feeling associated with early photographic prints and with the world we associate with Brassaï.

Become a collector yourself: collect the hidden magic of walls, quiet street details and intimate fragments of urban life. And remember—if you want a stable long exposure, it's useful to have a pillar nearby. The cigarette is optional.

Now let's see what the artists of our creative photography school made.

Part of the BANHALMI ecosystem

For the professional context and practical side of portrait photography, visit the BANHALMI professional website. Related art series, books and exhibitions are preserved in the BANHALMI ART archive.