Weegee.

On Saturday I checked out the Weegee exhibit at the Musée Maillol. It was absolutely delightful. Arthur Fellig (aka: Weegee) is considered to be the founding father of photojournalism. He captured the harsh reality of life in New York City in the years following the Great Depression and leading up to WWII. While most of his photographs deal with poverty, death and misery, the composition is such that you almost forget you're looking at real people and not still frames of a movie.



There has always been a debate over the artistic value of Weegee's work. His critics accused him of taking advantage of his fellow citizens and profiting from their misery. I even read that certain people consider him to be one of the precursors of sensationalist tabloid photography. Granted, most of his crime scene shots are nothing more than...well, crime scene shots. But in his other pieces, he has such an amazing ability to capture raw human emotions, or pick up on the sombre irony of a situation, or sometimes even bait his subjects to create a unique moment (like this picture of a drunk woman giving the evil eye to two ostentatiously dressed ladies) that such critiques are unfounded.



Last night I saw the Julie Delpy movie 2 Days in Paris. If you ever want to see a near-perfect depiction of the difference between North American and French ways of seeing the world, I highly recommend this movie. Sure, sometimes she exaggerates certain situations for comedic purposes, but in general the script conveys the French sense of personal space, humour, privacy and human rapport so accurately. The moral of the story: North Americans take themselves too seriously, the French don't take anything seriously. Which begs the question: if I'm half-french and half-canadian does that make me the ideal human being?