Late 1940s

Self-Portrait with Mannequins, Hollywood

American (born Austria), 1899 - 1968

Weegee was best-known for his sensational photojournalistic pictures of New York at night, which candidly presented a motley cast of characters: murderers, accident and fire victims, intoxicated brawlers, and the morbidly curious onlookers gathered to watch such scenes unfold. But in his lifetime, the tabloid photographer also made a staggering number of self-portraits (no less than 1,500); in them, he creatively reinvented himself as a photographer, a clown, a man in a drunk tank, a murder suspect, and a spaceman, to name just a few subjects. His playful and often humorous self-portraits delve into the world of the fantastic, and Self-Portrait with Mannequins, Hollywood exemplifies this kind of presentation—a complex amalgam of reality and fakery.