'Looking for love in all the wrong places':: Brassai in Andre!Breton's 'Mad Love'

This article addresses the issue of automatism in the context of Surrealist practice and, in particular, how Brassai's photographs in L'Amour Fou (Mad Love) (1936) speak to us of an alignment between photography and the marvellous. It argues that Mad Love presents the photograph as a link between narrative action and location, desire and its possible representation. Despite being devoid of an overtly emotive human presence, Brassai's nocturnal visions of Paris represent the search for an all-encompassing love.