Weegee, Herald Tribune, August 4, 1940

Heat-Wave Nocturne in Downtown New York

Weegee, “Naked City,” 1945

The New York Post, July 19, p. 19

Photography

By John Adam Knight

Worth Anyone’s $4
[$4 in July 1945 had the same buying power as $65.48 in June 2022.]

All of this is background for a brief review of a fine new picture book, Weegee’s “Naked City” (Essential Books, 243 pp., $4). This is Weegee at his former best, which means virtually unequaled. Most of these pictures were made before the Museum of Modern Art’s kiss of death took effect, and the purchaser need have little fear of being stuck with serious “art.”

What he will get for his $4 is a collection of grauvre reproductions of about 200 stark almost primitive photographs of death, despair and degeneracy in New York between midnight and morning. Though technically poor photographs, almost every one of them tells a gripping, human story, one of the best reasons I know for the invention of the camera.

The paper shortage denies me the pleasure of describing dozens of these pictures individually. I have space only to urge every one interested to buy the book and learn the lesson that Weegee once knew that honesty, a genuine interest in people – all people – and a recognition of what constitutes human interest in pictures can make any of you nearly as great as Weegee once was.

The New York Post, July 19, p. 19