In July 1945, Weegee published his magnum opus, Weegee’s Naked City, a collection of photographs taken on the streets of New York, his adopted hometown. Originally released as a luxurious hardcover edition with gravure prints, the book was subsequently kept in print for more than eight decades as a paperback with halftones – an impressive run by any publishing standard.
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But now, the book has been restored to its original glory in a new edition from Damiani/International Center of Photography. The latest edition comes with new texts by New York Magazine City Editor and Weegee biographer Christopher Bonanos, and ICP Weegee specialist Christopher George.
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Born Usher Fellig in Ukraine in 1899, Weegee took up photography at the age of 14, just three years after his family emigrated to New York. Self-taught, he opened a photo studio in 1918 and started working as a freelance photojournalist in 1935. Over the next decade, he would amass one of the most compelling collections of city life, capturing the gruesome glamour and ghoulish truths in a series of snapshots taken mostly at night.
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