Review: ‘Weegee: Society of the Spectacle’ at International Center of Photography

I’m always up for Weegee. That’s Arthur Fellig (1899–1968), the brewed-in-bitters photojournalist whose snaps of slugged gangsters and crashed cars showed us what’s always to be found under Gotham’s rock. Blood, gore, fire, and freaks were his specialties in the 1930s and ’40s, conveyed with go-for-the-jugular finesse, even, odd to say, poetry. Weegee: Society of the Spectacle is the new exhibition at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. The ICP owns Weegee’s archive, some 20,000 photographs and negatives and his ephemera files. It’s Weegee Central, which also makes it a center in the study of film noir aesthetics. It’s the sixth big Weegee exhibition the museum has mounted, and this one’s curated by Clément Chéroux, the director of the superb Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Society of the Spectacle compares, contrasts, and unites what it calls two Weegees. The first — and famous — Weegee is the one in his New York years. The second, whom I didn’t know, is from his time, at the end of his career, in Hollywood, where he photographed aspects of celebrity culture. The two have been treated separately, or the Hollywood years ignored. They’re diametrically opposed. It’s worth a stab, apologies to Mack the Knife and scarlet billows notwithstanding, but it doesn’t work since the two phases are beyond balance. One is defining while the other is fringe. By the end, the exhibition surrenders its argument. Still, it’s worth seeing, as is the ICP, among New York’s most quixotic art spaces.

I’m always up for Weegee. That’s Arthur Fellig (1899–1968), the brewed-in-bitters photojournalist whose snaps of slugged gangsters and crashed cars showed us what’s always to be found under Gotham’s rock. Blood, gore, fire, and freaks were his specialties in the 1930s and ’40s, conveyed with go-for-the-jugular finesse, even, odd to say, poetry. Weegee: Society of the Spectacle is the new exhibition at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. The ICP owns Weegee’s archive, some 20,000 photographs and negatives and his ephemera files. It’s Weegee Central, which also makes it a center in the study of film noir aesthetics. It’s the sixth big Weegee exhibition the museum has mounted, and this one’s curated by Clément Chéroux, the director of the superb Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Society of the Spectacle compares, contrasts, and unites what it calls two Weegees. The first — and famous — Weegee is the one in his New York years. The second, whom I didn’t know, is from his time, at the end of his career, in Hollywood, where he photographed aspects of celebrity culture. The two have been treated separately, or the Hollywood years ignored. They’re diametrically opposed. It’s worth a stab, apologies to Mack the Knife and scarlet billows notwithstanding, but it doesn’t work since the two phases are beyond balance. One is defining while the other is fringe. By the end, the exhibition surrenders its argument. Still, it’s worth seeing, as is the ICP, among New York’s most quixotic art spaces.