The legendary Hungarian–French photographer, sculptor, writer and filmmaker Brassaï, the pseudonym of Gyula Halász (1899-1984), rose to international fame in France in the 20th century. He became interested in the marginal art form of graffiti in the 1930s, seeing it as a form of ‘outsider art’ and documenting it in stark, atmospheric photographs, which were hugely influential for both that genre and the Surrealists. 

Accompanying the photographs in this book are selections from previously unpublished writings, including extracts from Brassaï’s own notebooks in which he noted the presence of elements of graffiti on the walls of Paris that he intended to photograph. The book also contains an interview with Picasso on the subject of graffiti as an art form. Beautifully produced, this first English language edition is a seminal work in the history of modern photography.