Weegee

Weegee photograph, The Critic, November 22, 1943, first published in LIFE Magazine, December 6, 1943.

Weegee was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig (June 12, 1899 - December 26, 1968), an American photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography.

Contents

1 Early life
2 Photography Career
3 Legacy
4 Weegee quotes
5 Further reading
6 External links

Early life

Weegee was born Usher Fellig in Złoczew (Złoczów) near Lemberg, Austrian Galicia (now Zolochiv, Ukraine). His name was changed to Arthur when he came with his family to live in New York in 1910, fleeing anti-semitism.

Photography Career

Fellig's nickname was a phonetic rendering of Ouija, due to his frequent arrival at scenes only minutes after crimes, fires or other emergencies were reported to authorities. He is variously said to have named himself Weegee, or to have been named by either the girls at Acme or by a police officer.

He is best known as a candid news photographer whose stark black-and-white shots documented street life in New York City. Weegee's photos of crime scenes, car-wreck victims in pools of their own blood, overcrowded urban beaches and various grotesques are still shocking, though some, like the juxtaposition of society grandes dames in ermines and tiaras and a glowering street woman before the first night of the Metropolitan Opera, (The Critic, 1943), turn out to have been staged.

In 1938, Fellig was the only New York newspaper reporter with a permit to have a portable police-band shortwave radio in his car. He maintained a complete darkroom in his trunk to expedite getting his free-lance product to the newspapers. Weegee worked mostly at night; he listened closely to broadcasts and often beat authorities to the scene.

Most of his photographs were taken with a 4x5 Speed Graphic camera preset at f/16 at 1/200 of a second with a flash. He had no formal photographic training but was a self-taught photographer and relentless self-promoter. He is sometimes said not to have had any knowledge of the New York art photography scene; but in 1943 The Museum of Modern Art included several of his photos in an exhibition. He was later included in another MoMA show organized by Edward Steichen, and he lectured at the New School for Social Research. He also undertook advertising and editorial assignments for Life and Vogue magazines, among others.

His acclaimed first book collection of photographs, Naked City (1945), became the inspiration for a major 1948 movie The Naked City, and later the title of a pioneering realistic television police drama series.

Weegee also made short 16mm films beginning in 1941 and worked with and in Hollywood from 1946 to the early 1960s, both as an actor and a consultant. In 1958, he was an uncredited special effects consultant and credited still photographer for Stanley Kubrick's film . His accent was purportedly the inspiration for the accent of the title character in the movie, played by Peter Sellers.

In the 1950s and 60s, Weegee experimented with panoramic photographs, photo distortions and photography through prisms. He also traveled widely in Europe in the 1960s, and took advantage of the liberal atmosphere in Europe to photograph nude subjects.

Legacy

A 1992 motion picture, The Public Eye, starred Joe Pesci as a 1940s tabloid photographer who has a police radio in his car. TV Guide states that Pesci's character is "based, of course, on Weegee" and [imdb's] trivia notes state that some of Fellig's photographs are shown in the film (as having been taken by Pesci's character).

Fellig is also referred to in an episode of The X-Files in which Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson) is assigned to work with a crime scene photographer named Alfred Fellig whose subjects may in fact be his victims.

The International Center of Photography mounted an exhibit of 95 Weegee photos June 9 - August 27, 2006, titled "Unknown Weegee."

Weegee quotes

"This is Easter Sunday in Harlem ... dressed in their best, they go to church ... the same as any other decent people .. they're no different ... these are people the papers don't write about or photograph." Caption of Harlem church-goers in 'Naked City'. (Elipses quoted directly from the original text.)
"This is unexposed film of Greenwich Village because nothing ever happens there ... " Caption for a completely black photograph in 'Naked City'. (Elipsis quoted directly from the original text.)
"People are so wonderful that a photographer has only to wait for that breathless moment to capture what he wants on film." From the advice chapter in 'Naked City'.
"When you find yourself beginning to feel a bond between yourself and the people you photograph, when you laugh and cry with their laughter and tears you will know you are on the right track." From the advice chapter in 'Naked City'.
"Weegee is a rather portly cigar-smoking, irregularly shaven man who has seen and recorded a great deal of ugliness and disaster, but he remains as shy and sensitive as if he had spent his life photographing babies and bridesmaids." From the introduction of 'Naked City'.

External links