This image is typical of Brassai's most famous photographs of Paris at night through which he established his reputation.

The present photograph initially appears to be the photograph reproduced in Minotaure no. 7 but on closer inspection is a slight variant of the published image. Given that the present photograph comes from the publication's own archive it seems probable that this image was submitted for publication at the same time in order to give the picture editors an alternative image. The published image was given the evocative title 'Everything also numbed by night'.

Another very similiar variant of this photograph was in the collection of Andre Breton and was used to illustrate his famous surrealist text, L'amour fou. It was sold as part of his estate (Calmels Cohen, 16 April 2003, lot 5287)

'Photography is so widely used in Minotaure that in spite of the frequent reassertion that the plastic activities, painting and objects, are central to surrealism, photographs are visually dominant as they had never been before.'

In Minotaure the theme of the city reappeares in a number of different guises, but perhaps most notably in the denial of urban form in favor of meditations on nature and ruins. Man Ray and Brassai took the photographs to accompany Dali's text " On the Terrifying and Edible Beauty of Modern-Style Architecture". Man Ray took the Gaudi building in Barcelona, Brassai the Metro entrances in Paris... In the Minotaure photographs, the animation or even anthropomorphism, of ruins and of architecture is frequently present... in Minotaure, photographs extend, amplify, soemtimes even provide the raison d'etre of a text....'

Dawn Ades, 'Photography and the Surrealist Text', in L'Amour Fou. Photography and Surrealism, Hayward Gallery/Arts Council, 1986.