After moving to Paris in 1924, Gyula Halász renamed himself Brassaï, after his hometown of Brasso, Hungary. In Paris he worked as a journalist and painter until around 1929, when he took up photography on the advice of fellow Hungarian André Kertész. A natural storyteller, Brassaï revealed his unscientific yet practical method of making exposures of Paris at night: *To gauge my shutter time, I wou
