Through more than two hundred period prints the volume presents a wide, thorough and largely unpublished view of Brassaï's work. Hungarian by birth but Parisian by adoption, Brassaï — the pen name of Gyula Halász — was one of the main figures of the last century, the one his friend Henry Miller called the living eye.

His frames of a mysterious Paris are famous: revealed by street lighting, wrapped in mist or bathed in rain, they bear witness to the nocturnal atmosphere of the capital in his time. But he also travelled through Europe and beyond, and that side of his work is shown here as well.