Weegee: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum, published by Getty Publications in 2005, presents a focused account of one of twentieth-century photography’s most recognisable practitioners. Working in New York with a Speed Graphic camera and police-radio access, Weegee photographed accidents, arrests, fires, and murders with an immediacy that made the city’s night-time emergencies part of the public record. The book also widens the frame beyond crime scenes to include life in the Bowery, Greenwich Village, and Harlem.

Judith Keller’s curatorial approach is central to the volume. The book examines approximately fifty of the ninety-five Weegee prints held by the J. Paul Getty Museum, combining a survey of his photojournalism with additional images that register the social worlds surrounding his assignments. Keller provides an introduction and plate commentary, giving the photographs a considered institutional and historical context rather than treating them as isolated shocks.

A further distinction is the inclusion of an edited transcript from a 2004 Getty Museum colloquium. The discussion follows Weegee’s movement from crime photographer toward social documentarian, while considering his publications, including Naked City (1945). This exchange places the images within a broader account of authorship, editing, and public circulation, and helps explain how photographs made under urgent circumstances acquired an enduring artistic and documentary force.

For collectors, the book matters as a compact museum publication that brings together a substantial selection from a major institutional holding while preserving the tension between reportage and artistic intention that defines Weegee’s work. Its 144-page English paperback format makes it an accessible point of entry, but its combination of collection-based selection, curatorial commentary, and historical discussion gives it value as a serious reference within a photography library.