Revisiting Weegee in an epoch where image and illusion is king

Dalia Al-Dujaili | British Journal of Photography | 14th February 2025

Weegee made his name with dramatic, even lurid, images of New York crime scenes. Years later, he moved on to take celebrity portraits. He understood that images make events (and celebrities) newsworthy, and he thus was part of the spectacle creation process. Yet only his early work is acclaimed. This writer defends the later portraits as another way to demonstrate the power of images. Another critic demurs: while Weegee’s early work “pulses with life” his portraits were “puerile … a dead end”.