Couple d'amoureux dans un petit café, 1932

Brassaï took up photography in order to capture the Paris nightlife that endlessly fascinated him. With fresh eyes he rarely had to wander far from home to expose the two dozen heavy glass plates he was able to carry in his camera bag. The present lot was made in the café on the ground floor of the hotel where he lived in a 'quartier populaire' near the Place d'Italie. Brassaï had an extraordinary talent for photographing people in interiors lit by shocking and disruptive flash powder in a way that looks entirely spontaneous and natural. This is a deceptively simple image whose multiple reflections suggest the many facets of love and courtship.