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Fotograful brassai biography meaning

His breadth of range is however more expansive than that seminal collection might suggest. As a photographic freelancer and photojournalist, he contributed most to the idea of vernacular photography though, thanks in part to the Surrealists, he is often attributed with blurring any obvious distinction between what might be called street photography and what might qualify as fine art.

Ultimately, it was his curiosity for the lived phenomena of twentieth-century urbanization, and of Paris in particular, that determined the subjects onto whom, and on which, he turned his lens. This close-shot of five wooden matches set against a printed text was intended to illustrate a story in issue 10 of Paris Magazine , published in June In this image, there seems to be an implicit play between object and text, as they are both cropped and juxtaposed to entice the viewer to look and speculate on the potential for the image's meaning s.

This "uprooted photograph," as photo-historian Peter Galassi named it, becomes something of a mystery, or suggests, unintended meanings that amused the readers of the popular press as well as the Surrealists who tried to take ownership of this curious type of imagery. The Surrealists valued the way the enlarged detail or close-up subverted modern objectivity and its 'straight' presentation of the object.

The more specific or detailed the familiar object, the more its potential to transform into something unfamiliar and ethereal: a brand-new object to behold perhaps. This ambiguous quality characterized vernacular photography at the time and the illustrated press produced it with regularity with the hope of engaging its readers. But Matches not only fitted within the realms of Surrealism, it belonged also to the New Vision movement in photography which was associated also with Bauhaus aesthetics: close-ups, abruptly cropped and framed at high and low angles.

He allowed the indirect lighting on the pavement to soften the effect of the bright streetlights.

A photographer from Transylvania made a brilliant career abroad in the s.

He photographed the city's historical churches and monuments, its parks and cemeteries, from north to south, from both sides of the Seine, and from multiple perspectives in all seasons and weather, but his nighttime photographs of outdoor locations only rarely included human figures. The cyclist a delivery boy has stopped to admire an enlarged headshot of the iconic German film star Marlene Dietrich which adorns the side of a building.

Rather, he was fascinated by Paris per se : but in its mundane details e. Identity appears enigmatic in this photograph of an elegant upper middle-class couple dancing together. On close inspection, we notice that the woman is in fact a man dressed as a lady: wearing satin gown, long gloves, a neck ruff, a hat, and a veil.