Weegee in Hollywood? You might as well imagine Atget in Cannes.

Arthur H. Fellig, the tabloid photographer known as Weegee, took candid pictures of New York street life in the 1930s and 1940s that are as emblematic of that time and place as the Paramount Theater and the Third Avenue el. His monograph “Naked City” (1945) ranks among the most important sociological studies of New York. And its title may be the best of any book ever published about this town.

It’s hard to believe Weegee could have drawn enough oxygen anywhere else to survive more than a few days. But it turns out that he spent about four and a half years in Hollywood, from 1947 through 1951, and took thousands of photographs, many of which wound up in “Naked Hollywood” (1953). Some, like those showing people waiting desperately to glimpse a celebrity, are instantly recognizable as his. Others, in which Weegee grotesquely distorted images through trick lenses or darkroom manipulation, are almost not recognizable at all. Still others, nudies of showgirls and models, are recognizably prurient.

Now, after decades of obscurity, Weegee’s Hollywood work is getting a second glance, in “Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles,” by Richard Meyer, an associate professor of art history and fine arts at the University of Southern California, and in an exhibition by the same name at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, through Feb. 27. The centerpiece of the book is a complete, full-scale reproduction of the 1955 pulp paperback reissue of “Naked Hollywood.”

Mr. Meyer is the first to acknowledge that the “Naked Hollywood” photos “continue to be regarded and reviled as kitsch,” though there are signs this may be changing. Daile Kaplan, vice president and director of photographs at Swann Galleries in New York, said, “There is a market for select images from Weegee’s Holllywood period — even if it is not as robust as the market for his gritty, vintage prints of New York City.”

Introducing his subject, Mr. Meyer asks: “Why present ‘Naked Hollywood’ in an art museum now? Or reprint it with a (not inexpensively priced) book published by Rizzoli? One reason might be because the boundaries separating art, photography and commerce have become ever more blurred in the decades since ‘Naked Hollywood’ first appeared. Weegee may thus have some relevant lessons to offer artists, photographers and museumgoers today.”

They are:

• Look all around, notice everything. “Often, this can be achieved by actually walking all around the subject, whatever it is, looking at it from every possible perspective,” Weegee said.

• Think serially. “Think about a particular subject, theme or action, or even a piece of architecture that you might be interested in,” Weegee suggested. “Whenever you see another example, shoot it.”

• Photography is a distortion. “I had to have a lens out of this world to do full justice to the strange sights and people which is Hollywood,” Weegee wrote.

I should add a fourth: Never assume. Atget did photograph Cannes.