Known both for his preternatural ability to show up at the scene of murders, car crashes, fires and other urban calamities, as well as his bizarre distortions of world-famous figures such as Marilyn Monroe and The Beatles, the photographer Weegee, AKA Arthur Fellig, was a fascinating study in contrasts. A new exhibit from the International Center of Photography in New York City, Weegee: Society of the Spectacle explores the work and legacy of a man who in many ways was at once of his time and so far ahead of it.
“At the beginning of this project was a kind of puzzling question,” said exhibit curator Clément Chéroux, “it’s as if you had in the same body a Walker Evans and a Man Ray. How could the same photographer do that?”
