“Chance Encounters: Photographs From the Collection of Norman Carr and Carolyn Kinder Carr”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/17/AR2008041701187_pf.html

Photography’s Enduring Street Cred
By Michael O’Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 18, 2008; WE22

“There is no better example of that uncomfortable tension (between laughter and tears, voyeurism and outrage) than the work of Arthur Fellig, the New York tabloid photographer nicknamed Weegee for his seemingly clairvoyant ability to turn up at crime scenes. Thirteen of his works are featured in “Chance Encounters,” all dating from his most fertile period (late 1930s to 1940s). They’re only a fraction of the 73 Weegees owned by the Carrs, but the baker’s dozen of works chosen for display encapsulate the full range of street photography’s power and ambiguity.

“Heat Spell” (1941), for example, is pure social document, almost evoking Hine in its depiction of a tenement fire escape crowded with kids sleeping outside on a hot summer night. In the portraiture category, Weegee’s “Norma Devine Is Sammy’s Mae West” (1944) captures a heavily mascaraed nightclub singer in almost religious ecstasy. As for the everyday surreal, it doesn’t come much stranger than “Simply Add Boiling Water” (1937)…”