In 1933, bewitched by the city of Paris, the photographer Brassaï published Paris by Night, a groundbreaking photobook depicting the shadowed streets, cafés, lovers, and nocturnal wanderers that came to define the modern image of the city.
A new exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery presents nearly 40 photographs from Brassaï’s celebrated Paris by Night series alongside selections from The Secret Paris, a group of images originally withheld from publication due to their provocative subject matter. Brassaï’s Secret Paris will be on view from February 7 through March 28, 2026. The exhibition is jointly presented by Howard Greenberg Gallery and Grob Gallery, Geneva.
Infused with mystery, intimacy, and cinematic atmosphere, Brassaï’s photographs transformed Paris after dark into a stage where beauty, danger, and desire coexisted. Considered too risqué for inclusion in the 1933 book, the Secret Paris photographs—depicting the city’s underworld of brothels, bars, and illicit encounters—were not published until 1976, decades after their creation. Together, the two series reveal Brassaï’s unmatched ability to navigate the city’s dual identities: the poetic and the forbidden, the public and the private. His Paris is at once romantic and raw, illuminated by streetlamps, reflected by mirrors, enveloped in fog and human vulnerability.
The show coincides with a new edition of Brassaï’s 1933 book Paris by Night published by Flammarion in on January 27, 2026, and an exhibition of his photography at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, opening in March.
One most influential and poetic photographers of the 20th century, Brassaï arrived in Paris in 1924 and worked as a journalist by day. At night he roamed the streets, photographing in bars, bistros, and brothels. His friend, the writer Henry Miller, who accompanied him on his nocturnal walks in the City of Lights, called him “the eye of Paris.” Inspired by the work of fellow Hungarian André Kertész, Brassaï became legendary for his exotic views of the city and its residents, elevating night photography into a new visual language that continues to influence generations of photographers.
Brassaï
Secret Paris
Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 EAST 57th STREET, SUITE 801
NEW YORK, NY 10022
www.howardgreenberg.com
Brassaï, Washing up in a brothel, Rue Quincampoix, c.1932
Brassaï, The Bal des Quatre Saisons, Rue de Lappe, c.1932
Brassaï, At Suzy, introductions, c.1932
Brassaï, Mirrored wardrobe in a brothel, Rue Quincampoix, c.1932
Brassaï, An English girl in her dressing room at the Folies Bergere, c.1932
Brassaï, At Suzy, c.1932
Brassaï, The Rue Quincampoix and its hôtels de passe, c.1932
Brassaï, Kiki with her friends Thérèse Treize de Caro and Lily, 1932