BRASSAI (Hungary-France, 1899-1984)
The chiasms of the place
We enter here in the thirties, a decade anticipated by Dorothea Lange,
where we are going to encounter more familiar photographic subjects, closer to
everyday life, less systematic and tense than Man Ray’s, Kertész’, Weston’s,
and even Sander’s or Paul Strand’s. This was probably the result of the great
depression. In the same while, the seism of classic representation, which
started around 1900, no longer bore its essential fruits with Heisenberg’s
Relations of incertitude in 1927. In everyday life, Bauhaus made place for
Raymond Loewy’s Styling, meaning that instead of spreading out their organs,
technical objects (typewriters or automobiles) dissimulated a great part of
their information – that had probably become plethoric – under a
hood. Brassaï introduces this innovative proximity and daily life particularly
well, and this simplified, coachbuilding vision that will bloom in halftone
engraving.
His photographic subject was the capturing of the place. The place is a
portion of the space where elements refer to one another in the shot, but also
in the depth. From back to front, and from front to back; and in exchanged
glances. In a word, in intro-reverberation. After all, photography is not spontaneously
talented in this regard, due to the fact that its Cyclops eye opens to its
watcher – who has also become cyclopean – a depth without to’s and
fro’s from the background. Yet, a range of conditions can remediate to that
state.
Hence, what first strikes in Brassaï’s work, and what we constantly find
throughout his career, is that his outlook infallibly notices balls (PP, 48).
Very often, it is the Euclidian ball, i.e. a virtually perfect ball such as with
this photograph of children in the Parc Montsouris in 1936 (PP, 4), where
almost-spherical balloons are agglutinated into an almost spherical ball
besides a child with a spherical head who himself holds a balloon. Similarly,
there are at least five regular-seize balls – among which the lamp
– in 1935 Tois Femmes masquées (*PN, 221). However, in Brassaï’s work, we
must generalize this preference right to the topological ball, which can look
like a cube or a roll: an isolated vertical roll (PP, 1, 8), standing rolls
shrinking into the depth (PP, 10), horizontal rolls spreading out frontally, stackable
rolls (PP, 9), etc. The balls-rolls can then be as much a posting pavilion (PP,
8) as a ‘Bijou’ at the Bar de la Lune (PP, 16), or still, Claudel et sa
femme in 1949 (PP, 60)
The ball invades space like every other volume – and in the same
while, concludes in itself – is perceptively a salient that has enough
vividness to start triggering the intro-reverberation of the place. We could
even be led to believe that someone who would notice it needed to be usually
gifted for massive, direct, frank, objectal, on the level, salient. With
things, with people. From the whore to the cult minister (PP, 50) and nuns (PP,
47). From Sartre (PP, 20) and Henry Miller (PP, 62) to Matisse (PP, 57) and
Claudel. The Creator having done things well, even Brassaï’s eyes were
incredibly globular (PHPH, 130). This ensured an immediate contact with
everyone and his longevity as a photographer. There are no concealed captures
here.
However, when general histories of photography want to represent
Brassaï, they inevitably choose photographs taken between 1931 and 1935, as
though something extraordinary had happened in that era. Indeed, we see that at
that moment our ubiquist photographer, not content with obtaining the
intro-reverberation of the place through the capturing of balls, situates the
latter in an atmosphere that is itself self-reverberating through combinatory
and permutational means. Was it the Hungarian influence of Kertész, whom he had
rubbed shoulders with and who had encouraged him?
Firstly, because during these years more so than usually, Brassaï
displays great attention to the chiasm, meaning the AB/BA structure, gently
declared in 1932’s
Un costume pour deux (AP, 286), where a character has the jacket, the other the trousers
according to the mechanism: clothing/nudity//nudity/clothing. The Danseuses, published in ‘Vogue’ magazine
(PHPH, 53) in 1935 are placed in the shape of the St Andrew’s cross. Like the
little boy and little girl flirting in 1939 (PP, 43). Among the graffiti that Brassaï
will photograph throughout his life, many are chiasms (**PP, 29).
The mirrors, where faraway B and nearby A are reflected in nearby A’ and
faraway B’ obviously multiply the embraced dispositions. The architects of the
era used them in places of passage, hotels, bars, bordellos, to give an
illusion of the intro-reverberation of a real place. 1932’s At Suzy’s (***AP, 287) proposes two body-rolls in a large mirror that is sufficiently shot from the side to favour
the conclusion rather than the abyss, whilst the Rue de Lappe, dated the same year (AP, 284) shows a chiasm through the two mirrors at a right angle that form a corner of
the bar.
Finally, still between 1931 and 1935, Brassaï seeks as much as possible
the overlapping in-depth (PP, 36), another auto-reverberation. In our Trois
femmes masquées,
dated 1935 (*PN, 221), the photographer – hence the future watcher of the
photograph (let us call them C) – grasp, along with the actors of the
scene (let us call them A), the spectators of the front stage (let us call them
B). Therefore C, above B, looks at A, that in turn looks at B while looking at
C above B. Simultaneously, C is mentally situated between A and B, even between
B and A, and is even looked at by B while it is looked at by A. Yet, A is
masked, which means that it is twice a watcher and twice watched, and the
interactions double. Note that we neglect the fact that B is masked for C, and
that therefore… We must compare this device with Diane Arbus’, which does not require
intermediary spectators (PN, 260) to measure the difference of topologies,
cybernetics, logics, and hence existential parties, and in our case
photographic subjects between one and the other.
Therefore, Une prostituée jouant au billiard russe, dated 1932, is almost a
declaration of principle (****AP, 282). The balls, the queue and the hole
along the frame evoke the Ancelot quatrain noted by Hugo: « J'ai joué, je
ne sais plus où,/ Sur un billard d'étrange sorte./ Les
billes restent à la porte/ Et la queue entre dans le trou». The prostitute
stands off from a cleverly oval mirror. She leans on her hands over the lying
body of the billiard, which is continued by her skirt, confounding the two in
the same function and demonstration. The solid spheres and curves dominate.
However, the sense is more general. Brassaï’s photography as such is Parisian
prostitution. The billiard where the inverted returns are multiplied as well as
the cushions, canons, the chiasms of the glances and the mirrors, the
reflections and echoes of every type, to trigger the place, or, more precisely,
its simulacra.
We need to take one last step. In 1933, still in those fatidic years,
Brassaï publishes Paris de Nuit. These 64 photographs are printed in
photogravure (intaglio printing) and reprinted by Flammarion (FLAM), using the
same process. Twenty
contain allusive human beings. Twenty others contain recognizable places.
Otherwise, there is only a blend of obscurity and glow. No longer places, but
the place: pure intro-reverberation virtually devoid of beacons, where
everything is total presence or total absence (Lavelle’s La Présence totale is dated 1934). In a word, not
nights, according to the counter-sense of Paul Morand’s accompanying text, but
night. Night as the ball of balls. As the body of obscurity. Non-isolated
photographs, each being only an obscure shot in the obscurity of its frame,
among the obscurity of the page, in continuity with the obscurity of the other
pages. These photos were rarely reproduced precisely because they are not
isolable. Paris de nuit is not photographs, but a photography book. Probably the only one.
The commentator will be tempted to add that in that night too there are
particular balls, such as the bedside of Notre-Dame (FLAM, 7) and explicit
rolls, such as a printing workshop (FLAM, 41). In particular, he will not
resist the temptation of noting the cobbles, the great, fat cobbles of the
Paris of these days, these dense balls grouped in dense balls, and sometimes in
‘S’ shaped chiasms, whose bellies are Brassaï on their own (*****, FLAM 14).
But we shall especially ask the commentator not to trouble the silence too
much.
And we will leave in the Henry Miller’s ecstasy: ‘Brassaï has the rare
gift which so many artists despise — normal vision (...) For Brassaï is
an eye, (...) the still, ail-inclusive eye of the Buddha which never closes. The insatiable eye. »
photos © Gilberte Brassai
Henri Van Lier
A photographic history of photography
in Les Cahiers de la Photographie, 1992
List of abbreviations of common references:
PN: Photography until Now, Museum of Modem Art.
AP: The Art of Photography, Yale University Press.
PP: Photo Poche,Centre National de la Photographie, Paris.
PHPH: Philosophy of Photography.
The acronyms (*), (**), (***) refer to
the first, second, and third illustration of the chapters, respectively. Thus,
the reference (*** AP, 417) must be interpreted as: “This refers to the third
illustration of the chapter, and you will find a better reproduction, or a
different one, with the necessary technical specifications, in The Art of
Photography listed under
number 417”.