Weegee was a street photographer for New York's popular press in the
1940s. He was infamous for adjusting the position of dead bodies at
crime scenes to make his photographs more pleasing to the eye. Wauter
Mannaert and Max de Radiguès have succeeded beautifully in capturing the
contrasts in Weegee's life in pictures: the eternal doubt over whether
to choose his violin or his photography; the streets and neighbourhoods
of New York that he loves but also wants to escape; his photographs,
which are printed in the popular press but should be on the walls of
galleries. Their approach turns the creator of the book Naked City into
a man of flesh and blood and makes you identify with him, so his rather
tragic fate hits all the harder. The style in which Mannaert has drawn
Weegee's hectic life is a perfect fit. His distinctive black-and-white
drawings create the impression that you're walking with Weegee through
New York's iconic Lower East Side of eighty years ago.