Weegee is the alter ego of Arthur Fellig, the great New York freelance photographer who from the mid-'30s to the mid-'40s elevated the stark, often brutal imagery of black-and-white tabloid photography to the status of low art. With the publication of his book Naked City in 1945, Weegee became synonymous with the garish crime-scene photo, the shots of transvestites being loaded into the paddy wagon, the images of tenement dwellers watching their homes burn. Although he would spend the last twenty-odd years of his life pursuing a gentler type of photography, Weegee never again approached the inspired genius found in his best tabloid work. Miles Barth, a curator with the International Center of Photography in New York, exercises a deft biographer's touch in Weegee's World; he complements the book's 265 photographs with a spare essay that underscores Weegee's phenomenal drive and raw talent. Weegee loved and excelled at all kinds of urban photography, and made many vivid images of Coney Island beach-goers, snooty opera attendees, lovers in movie theaters, and all types of playing children. But he was at his lurid best after dark; he was the only photographer of his time to use a police band radio in his car, to develop his film at the scene, and to eventually gain the respect of Manhattan authorities to the point where he was working not with but alongside the law, in a vague area that can be just barely condoned. The photo on the dust jacket seems like a standard shot of children clamoring to be in a picture, but Weegee was in fact standing over the body of a recently killed small-time hood when he snapped it; the children are pressing in to see the corpse. He was at his best when he, like his subjects, was slightly illicit, and this beautifully constructed book is a fitting testament to his gift for the dark and strange.