At an East Side Murder, 1943. (c) Weegee/International Center of Photography.

When the image above was missing from last week’s DART feature on Weegee, many subscribers protested by email. So here it is, along withinformatio about two more exhibitions about the photographer who made mayhem and murder his business. An exhibition based on Weegee's first book, Naked City, is currently on view at Steven Kasher Gallery, which scheduled the show in conjunction with Weegee: Murder is My Business at the ICP and Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles at MoCA. From the press release:

Naked City became a bestseller, made Weegee famous, and transformed him from a journalist into an artist. It was a title with many implications. The city and its citizens exposed. The bare truth. A city that fills you with hungers, lusts, passions. A city ready to frolic. A city that makes you thinkbad thoughts. No other photographer has ever portrayed a city with Weegee's level of intimacy, amorality, complicity—and humor. He strips the citizens bare, all of them, poor, rich and middling. There is no looking down or looking up: he is too mixed up in everything he sees, too much part of the shenanigans, too compromised, too desperate for publicity and pay, too much the obsessive Peeping Tom.

Left to right: Billie Dauscha and Mabel Sidney, Bowery Entertainers, December 4, 1944; Jimmy Armstrong, the Clown, ca. 1943; Transvestite in a Police Van, 1941. Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery.

Ultimately, we feel innocent while looking at Weegee's naked city. Shame and pride are banished as we confront in our own bad and good natures, in a bald light, in the raw.The influence of Weegee and of Naked City are incalculable. William Klein’s New York and Robert Frank's The Americansare unthinkable without it. Diane Arbus wrote: "He was SO good when he was good. Extraordinary!" Daido Moriyama, greatest of all Japanese street photographers cites Weegee (along with Warhol) as his major influence. Warhol's major subject is the tabloid imagery that Weegee pioneered and epitomized.

Weegee: Naked City continues at Steven Kasher Gallery through February 25^th. 521 West 23^rd Street, NY, NY.

Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles continues at MoCA through February 27^th. 250 Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA.

Weegee: Murder Is My Business continues at the International Center of Photography through September 2, 2012. 1133 Avenue of the Americas, NY, NY.

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