In the same way that violinists can be counted on to have remarkable hands, photographers have great eyes. Brassai’s were bouncing balls under aerodynamic eyebrows and his Paris was a city on the cusp “between the era of the Belle Epoque and that of the Modern Age.” The gas lamps of Europe were giving way to electric streetlights. That meant a new kind of nighttime, full of sexy pinpoints in the fog, 20th century floodlights over 19th century cobblestones, popguns of brightness in dark places that told dirty jokes about the naked city. Brassai claimed as his territory the nocturnal city that camera and film technology was just then arriving at the means to capture.
