One Fine Show: “Brassaï, The Secret Signs of Paris” at Moderna Museet

July 24, 2026 / Sophie Clearwater /

Brassaï, Lovers in a Small Paris Café, Place d’Italie (ca. 1932). © Estate Brassaï Succession – Philippe Ribeyrolles 2026

Part of my city lives online now, and it’s cold comfort that it doesn’t represent the real version in the slightest. One still has to fight the impulse to trip every monologuing TikToker in the East Village. My favorite kind of video produced by these children is the man on the street interview, which asks fellow recent transplants questions like “What are you wearing?” or “How are you so confident?” It’s pretty cute that they think we’d want any advice from either person, when neither can think of anything better to do in New York than make content.

But audiences have always been interested in the interior lives of urbanites, a territory explored by “Brassaï: The Secret Signs of Paris” at Moderna Museet, the first major Swedish presentation of the artist, aka Gyula Halász (1899-1984). This Transylvanian-born émigré took the name of his hometown, Brassó, and made himself the definitive portraitist of Paris after dark. Curator Anna Tellgren, working with the photographer’s nephew Philippe Ribeyrolles and the Estate Brassaï Succession—which lent nearly the entire show—has gathered more than 160 vintage gelatin silver prints, each developed by Brassaï’s own hand, plus his 1956 short film. The selection tracks his three lifelong subjects: the nocturnal city and its inhabitants, the artists he ran with like Pablo Picasso and the anonymous street graffiti he stalked for a quarter century—long before graffiti became something sought as office decor.

Le Roi Soleil (c. 1950) is a great example of the last body of work, gracing the cover of his book Graffiti (1960). It depicts a carving of an anonymous grotesque hacked into a wall at the Porte de Saint-Ouen, the flea-market gate on the working-class northern rim of Paris. The title is ironic, of course, a reference to the man who once said “l’état c’est moi,” but one sees in this image a majesty presented as different but not inferior to Versailles. The photographer would carry pocket cards to sketch each mark and note its address, so he could return for better light or to track how a carving mutated over years.

He liked to get to know his subjects, and you could see through this interest in masks how he became friends with Picasso, this intimacy on display in Picasso in His Studio, Rue des Grands-Augustins (ca. 1939-40). The artist feels comfortable enough to choke a sculpture under the penetrating lamps of a professional photoshoot that allows us to see its diverse texture and—though this was probably not intended—Picasso’s swagged out drip. And to think that he was initially hired to document only the three-dimensional artworks. His notes from their hangs became Conversations with Picasso (1964), which bore the quote from the artist, “Read this book if you want to understand me.”

Among his better known works is Lovers in a Small Paris Café, Place d’Italie (ca. 1932), a nightlife photo that at first glance has similar claims to transparency. The pair sit in a corner banquette, surrounded by mirrors, so the picture promises a look at every aspect of their embrace. But we can’t actually see either of their faces completely, and the emotion on hers is mysterious. This is a portrait of romance in the abstract, with all its excellent darkness and smoke.