Swimmer

Brassaï (Gyula Halász)WW-1930-140457

1930·Gelatin silver print·Image/paper: 16.3 × 23.6 cm (6 7/16 × 9 5/16 in.)

<p>Upon moving to Paris in 1924, and drawing inspiration from fellow Hungarian photographer and emigrant André Kertész, Brassaï took to the streets of the city in search of authenticity. He possessed an “infatuation with outcasts,” as he phrased it, and documented the characters of the city’s evening underworld, including prostitutes, transvestites, and mobsters; he published a selection of these images as the book <em>Paris de Nuit (Paris by Night)</em> in 1933. Brassaï also made pictures in the light of day. He might have taken this photograph while vacationing in the coastal French town, Loctudy, near Brittany. In a letter to his parents dated September 18, 1931, he mentions spending time there with a young woman named Jeannine. Though the exact subject of this work is unknown, it is possibly her contorted body, awkwardly mimicking the movement of a swimmer, that Brassaï emphasized and rendered as a sculptural figure in this photograph.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1930
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: Image/paper: 16.3 × 23.6 cm (6 7/16 × 9 5/16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Brassaï (Gyula Halász)

Artist

Brassaï (Gyula Halász)

Printmaking

Brassaï was a French photographer and artist best known for his nocturnal photographs of Paris from the 1930s onwards. Working primarily in black and white, he documented the city's underworld, street life, and architectural details with a distinctive graphic sensibility that emphasized shadow, texture, and geometric form. His photographs of graffiti, brothels, and nightclubs established a visual vocabulary for urban modernism that influenced generations of photographers. He also worked in sculpture, drawing, and printmaking, extending his formal investigations across multiple media throughout his career.

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