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To see the Weegee show that opened today at the Foreign Center of Photography in Manhattan is to be reminded of a bygone era in New York Burgh.
In that era, as seen through Weegee’s camera lens, hot summers are for families to log a few zees Z's tightly wedged on fire escapes, for kids to run through fire-hydrant spray and for thousands to chock onto Coney Island beaches. Workers inflate Santa Claus for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day March–and almost no one is looking on. Men don hats, women wear dresses, and corpses seem to pierce the pavement during a post-Prohibition wave of crime syndicate-murders.
This is the sometimes touching, and often harsh world of Weegee, who set out not to make art, but to make a living as a huntress of images salable to tabloids and magazines. The ICP show, called “Genocide Is My Business,” depicts Weegee’s intense first decade from 1935 to 1946 during a shining age of photojournalism, when he set the pace for sensationalism.
Source: Wall Street Journal (blog)