BRASSAI / Biography & Images - Atget Photography.com BRASSAI took his name from the town of his birth, Brasso, in Transylvania, then part of Hungary, later of Roumania, and famous as the home of Court Dracula. He studied art at the academies of Budapest and Berlin before coming to Paris in the mid-twenties. He was completely disinterested in photography, if not scornful of it, until he saw the work being done by his acquaintance Andre Kertesz, which inspired him to take up the medium himself. In the early thirties he set about photographing the night of Paris, especially at its more colorful and more disreputable levels. The results this project --- a fascinatingly tawdry collection of prostitutes, pimps, madams, transvestites, apaches, and assorted cold-eyed pleasure-seekers --- was published in 1933 as Paris de Nuit, one of the most remarkable of all photographic books. Making photographs in the dark bistros and darker streets presented a difficult technical problem. from "Looking at Photographs " by John Szarkowski BRASSAI quotes
Robert Frank / Biography & Images - Atget Photography.com Robert Frank's fine flatulent black joke on American politics can be read as either farce or anguished protest. It is possible that Frank himself was not sure which he meant. In 1956, he was still a relative newcomer to the United States, and his basic reaction might well have been one of dumb amazement as he investigated the gaudy insanities and strangely touching contradictions of American culture. A similar shock has been experienced by many others who have been suddenly transplanted as adults to this exotic soil. It is tempting to believe that Frank's emergence in the fifties as a photographer of profound originality was a measure of his success in meeting on artistic grounds the very difficult challenge of a radically new culture. The subject matter of Frank's pictures was not in itself shocking. Frank postulated that one might with profit take seriously what the people took seriously. from "Looking at Photographs " by John Szarkowski - Robert Frank photo library - The Americans
Accueil - Sebastiao Salgado Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson