Weegee, Autopsie du Spectacle

The question of spectacle is omnipresent in Weegee's work. In the first part of his career, which corresponds historically with the rise of the tabloid press, he participated in the transformation of the news item into a spectacle. To make this clear, he often included spectators or other photographers in the foreground of his images. In the second half of his career, Weegee mocked the Hollywood spectacular: its ephemeral glories, the crowds that adored them and the mundanities that surrounded them. A few years before the Situationist International, his photographs offered an incisive critique of the Society of the Spectacle.