The latest exhibition to open at Melbourne’s Heide Museum of Modern Art is a dreamy trip into a misty and magnificent Paris of yesteryear.

No matter what the folks at the Parliament House end of Collins Street in Melbourne will tell you, there is another little spot not a million miles away from the city’s CBD that has Paris in its soul and it’s not a thoroughfare at all.

It is Heide Museum of Modern Art – the place where John and Sunday Reed first bought a former dairy farm in 1934 and turned it into a haven for a number of Australia’s best known artists and art lovers, including the Moras, art dealer George and indefatigable artist Mirka, with the latter the subject of at least four exhibitions to date.

But she hasn’t been the only French influence on the gallery. Moya Dyring: An Australian Salon in Paris, Albert Tucker: Mobile Home have featured over the last decade. But it’s the photography exhibitions that really underscore Heide’s francophile credentials.

In 2023 we had the Surrealist Lee Miller exhibition, followed by Man Ray and Max Dupain last year. And now Heide has unveiled its latest foray into all things French with Brassaï: Secret Paris, marking the third significant modernist photography exhibition presented by the gallery in quick succession.

Too much French photography is never enough

It’s a logical progression. Brassaï was good friends with Georges Mora, following their meeting in Paris in the 1960s, and it was the art dealer who organised the photographer’s first commercial exhibitions here at the Tolarno Galleries in 1979 and 1980.

While it’s a little tricky to properly review the exhibition as the media preview took place during the install – so we didn’t get the full impact of the exhibition – it was still easy to fall under Brassaï’s spell. And appreciate the classy black and white exhibition design courtesy of Mel Bright, Eliza Ng, Maryna Popova and Pei She Lee of Studio Bright.

Brassaï was the pseudonym of Gyula Halász, a Hungarian born photographer, sculptor, writer and filmmaker who moved to Paris at the age of 25 and lived in France until his death at the age of 84.

In Paris, he mixed in the same circles as artists and writers like Henry Miller, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse and Jean Cocteau, but his love of the city was revealed through his extraordinary photographs – images that captured the demi monde, the streets after dark, the secret nooks and crannies and the atmospheric moments.

Equally adept at the detailed set-up – he would time his exposures to by measuring them against how long it took him to smoke a cigarette – he also excelled at the passing moment – the child in the street or the glimpse of a quintessentially Parisian fleeting moment.

Chapters and pursuits

Comprising over 150 vintage prints, Brassaï: Secret Paris is divided into discrete segments: Paris by Night, Paris by Day, The Parisian Avant Garde and Surrealism. There is a whole section given over to his images of early graffiti – faces carved into walls – and other urban markings.

For this viewer though it’s those foggy and chilly shots of bridges, steps, lampost and shadows that conjure up the world so perfectly – even more so than the strikingly familiar images of lovers in tea rooms and bars or the elderly bejewelled madame gazing knowingly down the lens. Though they are fabulous too.

To emphasise his skill and ability to home in on the most seemingly inconsequential of details, there is a whole room designed for particular attention. In this section, each image is located behind a protruding frame, with stools scattered around, so that visitors can sit and contemplate each photograph individually and at their leisure.

The famous friends are also represented, along with Brassaï’s Transformations series and his 1948 short film Tant qu’il y aura des bêtes, although this wasn’t up and running at the time of the preview.

Brassaï: Secret Paris is now showing at Heide Museum of Modern Art and runs until 15 November 2026. Admission included with museum admission.

Top image: ‘Couple au bal des Quatre Saisons, rue de Lappe ‘1932, gelatin silver print mounted on hardboard, 50 x 40 cm © Estate Brassaï Succession – Philippe Ribeyrolles (detail)