They move like fish in the still dark waters of a lake, men flitting through existence, stuck between two states of being. He was soon drawn into the artistic life around the Montparnasse, and also held a daytime job as a journalist.

The current reissue of Paris by Night brings one of the last century’s key photographic works back into print. Thus, as well as a wonderful collection of very evocative images, the book can act as a reminder of the importance in engaging the intellect to make such images. Roaming Paris streets by night in the early 1930s, Brassa created arresting images of the city's dramatic nocturnal landscape. I particularly like the quotation from Brassai himself at the beginning – I often feel that nothing is more surreal than reality (especially in these interesting times) and it is always comforting to know that others both now and in the past have felt the same. The layout, with its characteristic full-page bleeds, never more felicitously employed, takes us from image to image, from page to page, and across night-time Paris, with effortless panache.There, in 1932, he changed his given name, Gyula Halász, to a doctored version of his hometown’s name—his roots as a foreigner remained crucial to his vision and identity. In the early 21st century, the discovery of more than 200 letters and hundreds of drawings and other items from the period 1940–1984 has provided scholars with material for understanding his later life and career.

In the early thirties [Brassaï] set about photographing the night of Paris, especially at its more colorful and more disreputable levels. I no longer have the book as, during a house move many years ago, about half of my book collection and several items of photo equipment were lost. The deserted streets could be a factor of the five minute exposure while the close up shots of the street workers, of all occupations would have been necessary because of the lack of electronic flash. The more I reflect upon the workload itself, I wonder about his habits as he went out each night to photograph.Their nocturnal surroundings fascinated the artist, whose photographs are as much an exploration of the technical challenge of portraying darkness as portraits of a hauntingly dramatic night world. Indeed, Brassaï wasn’t a native Frenchman, but a Hungarian born in Brassó, Transylvania (in modern-day Romania, which was previously under Austro-Hungarian rule). As the Paris of these images is that preceding 1933 when the book was first self-published in its original form, they are almost impossible to re-take now; the city has seen too many changes. The world that Brassaï had photographed with such adoration was gone, though he continued to live and work in France until his death in 1984.