City of Nights

Arriving in Paris in 1924, Hungarian-born Gyula Halász was anything but a photographer. A painter and occasional journalist, he even confessed to despising the art form. But he was a night owl, attracted to a city couched in the glow of street lamps and dense mist. Nocturnal Paris was, to him, a “world of pleasure, of love, vice, crime, drugs … Paris at its most alive.” The work of Brassaï, as Halász became in 1932 (meaning “from Brassó,” his native village), made him one of the most admired and enduring photographers of the last century. And when 750 of the artist’s works are auctioned at Drouot Montaigne in Paris Oct. 2-3 — two-thirds of them photographs — expect his images of the city after dark to be the top prizes. Toying with deep blacks and light, Brassaï pictured extraordinary cityscapes.

A voyeur, he captured lovers — like those in Couple at the Four Seasons Dance Hall, Rue de Lappe (circa 1932), pictured — prostitutes and brothels, some “like a chapel lit up for midnight mass.” About 190 drawings of a “born draftsman,” as Pablo Picasso labeled him, will also be on offer, alongside a dozen of Brassaï’s sculptures; prices range from about $250 to $100,000. Not bad for the night shift. www.brassai-succession-millon.com