A quick note—this graphic novel has adult situations and nudity. (The children! The children!)
‘A picture is worth a thousand words.’ This was particularly true if you were a news photographer in New York City during the 1930s and 1940s. Murder scenes, shootings and fires were all a part of your daily routine, and there was a constant race to get the photo first.
“He profits from photos of death, suffering and agony…”
Weegee is a fictional (but based on facts) biography of the renowned crime and street photographer, whose work captured both the gritty and glamourous nature of NYC during this era. The book opens fifteen years into Weegee’s career as a self-taught news photographer. He is famous in his neighbourhood, lives across the street from police headquarters, and makes a decent living selling salacious crime-scene photos to the various city newspapers. But Weegee wants more—his ambition is apparent when he exclaims to the local bartender, “I want to be the best photographer in New York, not the best corpse photographer in the Lower East Side!”
Weegee is, in fact, a remarkably good photographer. He has an excellent eye for finding drama and emotion…or for creating it when he feels it’s needed. 
He often arrives at a crime scene before the police and adjusts the position of a dead body—to “improve” the shot. And he outcompetes his rivals by having a full development lab in the trunk of his car, sending barely-dry photos by courier from each crime scene.
However, Weegee also captures the smaller, more intimate moments of his neighbourhood streets. Max de Radiguès (writer) and Wauter Mannaert (artist) take us on a tour of the Lower East Side and its characters as Weegee wanders around. 
In black pen and grey tone, Mannaert captures the chaotic nature of streets filled with blind peanut vendors, newspaper boys, children playing, people shouting and people gossiping on their stoops. To Mannaert’s credit, you can practically hear the noises of the city, even though there aren’t any sound effects lettered in these panels.
“In black pen and grey tone, Mannaert captures the chaotic nature of New York streets…you can practically hear the noises of the city…”
de Radiguès masterfully weaves Weegee’s motivations into the dialogue of this biography. Weegee knows his street photography has artistic merit, and why: “I grew up on these streets…I’m behind the camera and in front of it at the same time, you get me?” He profits from photos of death, suffering and agony, but as he says to a local prostitute, “…if I keep taking pictures of corpses, I’m going to end up in the madhouse.”
Ultimately, Weegee is a story of dreams, desire and ambition. It’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that Weegee does achieve his artistic ambitions. This biography ends in 1945, just after the release of his acclaimed photo book Naked City. But although Weegee the photographer became famous enough to work for Life Magazine and Vogue, the last few panels of this book show he never lost his eye for capturing the drama of a moment—but perhaps with just a tiny “improvement”.
Weegee
Max de Radiguès (Writer) & Wauter Mannaert (Artist)
Aleshia Jensen (Translation)
Édition Sarbacane (French Edition, released 2016)
Conundrum Press (English Edition, released 2018)
Weegee
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