*Couple of Lovers in a Small Café on Place d’Italie,* by Brassaï, circa 1932.

*The Sun King,* from the ninth series, titled “Primitive Images,” 1930s–50s.

*Fog in Paris. Léon-Paul Fargue’s Taxi,* circa 1932.

*The “Môme Bijou” at Bar de la Lune, Montmartre,* 1932.

*Couple with a Sailor from the Eiffel Tower Bridge,* circa 1932.

*Couple at the Quatre-Saisons Dance Hall on Rue de Lappe,* 1932.

A Hungarian in Paris

A new coffee-table book collects Brassaï’s photographs of the City of Light, his adopted home and muse for more than 50 years

The photographer Brassaï was many things. Hungarian by birth, Parisian by choice. “A living eye,” according to Henry Miller. A stage designer, sculptor, filmmaker, writer. A chronicler of 20th-century high society and of prostitutes. An avid admirer of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s. His real name was Gyula Halász, and the city of Paris—its bâtiments and boulevards—was his specialty.

Brassaï was born in Brassó, present-day Romania, on September 9, 1899, at nine o’clock at night. He considered the number nine to be a symbol of cosmic order—a sign, he believed, that he was destined for greatness. In 1903, when Gyula was four, his family spent a year in Paris. He settled there for good in February 1924.