First published in 1933 and compiled by Brassaï himself, this landmark in the history of urban photography has been carefully reissued in a new edition with gilt-edged pages. It’s released by Flammarion and it is a stunning title.

Brassaï (1899–1984), among the most influential photographers of the twentieth century, left Hungary for Paris in 1924. He became renowned for his 1930s documentation of the city and for his portraits of figures such as Picasso, Matisse, and Henry Miller. Over a fifty-year career, he also pursued drawing, sculpture, writing, and filmmaking. Paul Morand, a modernist French writer, was the author of short stories and novellas.

Paris by night has always been atmospheric. Fascinated by the French capital, the photographer balanced a career as a journalist by day with nocturnal wanderings through the city in the early 1930s. He immersed himself in its bistros and bars, crossing paths with avant-garde artists, streetwalkers, peddlers, drifters, and clandestine lovers. His lens revealed a shadowy, poetic world, and with just sixty-two photographs, remarkable for their technical brilliance in rendering darkness, he secured his reputation as one of the era’s most original voices in photography.

The Paris he captured is at once spectral and alive: deserted alleys and winding streets give way to metro stations, cabarets, dancers, night workers, and underworld figures. This seminal body of work not only chronicles the City of Light at night but also marks Brassaï’s emergence as an artist. Long celebrated as a touchstone for photographers, designers, and fashion creatives, the book is now presented in a finely crafted edition, produced with state-of-the-art engraving techniques to honor the quality of the original prints, complete with cloth binding and tinted page edges.