In the quiet midnight streets of Paris, Parisians gather at clubs, bars and the cabaret. Two lovers embrace on a park bench in the Tuileries. A prostitute tidies her hair as the gargoyles watch over the lonely streets of the city. Brassai’s work captures the ephemeral ambience of late-night Paris. His is a voyeuristic vision of Paris, romantic, seductive and seedy. His work is entrancing; the carefully composed shots of the city invite you into his own construction of the city.

Heide Gallery’s Brassai: Secret Paris exhibition is relatively short, but it is easy to linger on every photograph of Brassai’s, so it in no way feels lacklustre. The first thing you notice in entering the exhibition is the banners placed centre left and right in the room. Fragments of Brassai’s photographs have been blown up onto the outfacing side of the banners, but you need only walk around them to find more of Brassai’s photography hung up on the other side. The layout is simplistic but clever, as I went into the exhibition, I uncovered the artworks that had previously been hidden just out of sight, just like Brassai explored the hidden sides of Paris within his work. I found that this first room was particularly invigorating—the bulk of the photography capturing the streets of Paris is in here, and whilst the other rooms are, mostly, interesting in their own right, I felt that the first room of the exhibit was the most cohesive in its design and layout.

The only real negative I noticed was that in one of the rooms, the smaller photos have been stored into little peepholes in the wall. They rest at about hip height and are more than a little awkward to get a good look at. Certainly, I noticed a notable lack of viewers stopping to really look at these photographs, unlike in the other rooms of the exhibit. Although there are stools littered around the room, it is just as tedious to sit down, inspect the photograph inside, stand up and move on to the next one as it is to simply bend down at the waist (that is to say: very tedious). Even regardless of how annoying I felt it was, there is no doubt that for people with limited back or hip mobility, attempting to view these artworks could very well prove a real issue.

Even despite this, me and my mum enjoyed the exhibit enough that we re-visited it before we left Heide, albeit skipping over the strange little room, and so I highly encourage anyone—regardless of their level of knowledge of art—to check out the exhibition. Brassai: Secret Paris is currently running until the 15^th of November and a $22 concession ticket to Heide grants you access to all their exhibitions.