Take the photograph by Brassaï, “La Tour Saint-Jacques.” It is in the room titled, “Le Réel, le Fortuit, le Merveilleux” demonstrating the Surrealist fascination with the city as their primary text. It is a picture of the tower at night with scaffolding surrounding it, as seen from the street level. Of course, this was not the first time in the history of art that someone has turned to the everyday images to explore a deeper idea. But the photograph does much more: it searches for the modern sublime of the city at night, devoid of human presence and almost devoid of adequate lighting. A room over, there are scrapbooks full of rags, streets, slums, and window-displays. The Surrealists found a new urban life all around them, aided in no small part to the camera that, yes, as Benjamin would say, strips what is being photographed of its authentic place in time and space. And this is the point.
