Offering a new perspective on Weegee-s oeuvre, The Society of the Spectacle presents the photographer-s iconic images beside lesser-known works. There-s a mystery to Weegee. The American photographer-s career seems to be split in two. One side includes his sensational photography printed in North American tabloids: corpses of gangsters lying in pools of their own blood, bodies trapped in battered vehicles, kingpins looking sinister behind the bars of prison wagons, dilapidated slums consumed by fire, and other harrowing onevidence of the lives of the underprivileged in New York from 1935 to 1945. Then come the festive photographs - glamorous parties, performances by entertainers, jubilant crowds, openings and premieres - to which we must add a vast array of portraits of public figures that Weegee delighted in distorting using a rich palette of tricks between 1948 and 1951, a practice he pursued until the end of his life. How can these diametrically opposed bodies of work coexist? Criti
