Anthony W. Lee And Richard Meyer, Weegee And Naked City. Berkeley, Los Angeles And London; University Of California Press, 2008. ￡11,95.132 Pp

摘要

Arthur Fellig's sensationalist photographs of New York were hugely successful when put together as a photo-book in 1945. Naked City chronicled car accidents, murders, housefires, paddy wagon incidents, crowd scenes and more: a kaleidoscope of images with or without accompanying captions. It moved from top to bottom of the social structure in New York, shifting restlessly from the Metropolitan Opera and Waldorf-Astoria to dead racketeers and seedy bars, Fellig's stylish moniker was Weegee, an apparent reference to his uncanny ability to be quick on the scene as a result of his Ouija-like knowledge of the city. In this book, Anthony Lee and Richard Meyer explore why Naked City was such a success, and how that success related to the tabloid culture of the time. It was part of a metropolitan world that was becoming increasingly defined in visual terms, centred around photographic information, and Weegee was central to that development. Lee and Meyer have somewhat different takes on Weegee's photojournalism, and these merge in the separately penned halves of the book. Together they add up to an informed and insightful account of Weegee's own development and its culmination in his best-selling book.