To live in New York is to witness a city in constant transformation: the sudden rise of glass condos sheltering phantom czarinas; crusty dive bars replaced with 24 hour ATMs; the classic red-sauce joint co-opted by a slicker version of itself, you know the story. One yearns for simpler times. Weegee reminds us that simpler is hard to come by.
As a tabloid photographer, Weegee documented a far more menacing New York. His was the Naked City (his 1945 book lent its title and aesthetic to the Jules Dassin film), an unyielding noir in which rubbed-out mobsters were left on the sidewalk next to the milk bottles, and even the Dumbo balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade looked as if it were concealing a blade.
