From July 19 to November 9, 2025, the great international photography returns to the Saint-Bénin Center in Aosta with the exhibition Brassaï. The Eye of Paris. The retrospective, promoted by the Department of Cultural Heritage and Activities, Educational System, and Policies for Intergenerational Relations of the Autonomous Region of Valle d'Aosta and produced by Silvana Editoriale, is curated by Philippe Ribeyrolles, a scholar and nephew of the photographer who holds an invaluable collection of Brassaï prints and extensive documentation related to his work as an artist.

The exhibition will feature over 150 vintage prints, as well as sculptures, documents, and objects belonging to the photographer, offering an in-depth and unprecedented look at Brassaï's work, with particular attention to the famous images dedicated to the French capital and its life.

His photographs dedicated to the City of Light – from the working-class neighborhoods to the iconic monuments, from fashion to portraits of artist friends, to graffiti and nightlife – are now iconic images that immediately identify the face of Paris in the collective imagination.

Hungarian by birth - his real name is Gyula Halász, replaced by the pseudonym Brassaï in honor of Brassó, his hometown - but adopted by Paris, Brassaï was one of the protagonists of 20th-century photography, defined by his friend Henry Miller as the "living eye" of photography.

In close relationship with artists such as Picasso, Dalí, and Matisse, and close to the surrealist movement, from 1924 he was part of the great cultural ferment that invested Paris in those years. Brassaï was among the first photographers able to capture the nighttime atmosphere of Paris at the time and its people: workers, prostitutes, clochards, artists, solitary wanderers. In his walks, the photographer did not limit himself to representing the landscape or architectural views, but also ventured into more intimate and confined indoor spaces, where society met and had fun.

In 1933, he published his volume Paris de Nuit, a fundamental work in the history of French photography.

His images were also published in the surrealist magazine "Minotaure," of which Brassaï became a collaborator and through which he met surrealist writers and poets such as Breton, Éluard, Desnos, Benjamin Péret, and Man Ray.

"To exhibit Brassaï today - says Philippe Ribeyrolles, curator of the exhibition - means revisiting this wonderful work in every sense, taking stock of the diversity of subjects addressed, mixing artistic and documentary approaches; it means immersing oneself in the atmosphere of Montparnasse, where between the two wars many artists and writers met, many of whom came from Eastern Europe, like his compatriot André Kertész. The latter had a significant influence on the photographers around him, including Brassaï himself and Robert Doisneau."

Brassaï belongs to that French "humanist" school of photography defined by the essential presence of women, men, and children in his shots, although summarizing his work only under this aspect would be reductive.