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.
Weegee worked in New Jersey as a press photographer, and he developed his signature style by following the city's emergency services and documenting their activity. Much of his work depicted unflinchingly realistic scenes of urban life, crime, injury and death. Weegee published photographic books and also worked in cinema, initially making his own short films and later collaborating with film directors such as Jack Donohue and Stanley Kubrick.
Early life
Weegee was born Usher Fellig in Złoczów (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), near Lemberg, Austrian Galicia. His name was changed to Arthur when he came with his family to live in New York in 1909.
Photography career
Fellig's nickname was a phonetic rendering of Ouija, due to his frequent, seemingly prescient arrivals at scenes only minutes after crimes, fires or other emergencies were reported to authorities.[citation needed] He is variously said to have named himself Weegee or to have been named by either the girls at Acme Newspictures or by a police officer.
In 1938, Fellig was the only New York newspaper reporter with a permit to have a portable police-band shortwave radio. He maintained a complete darkroom in the trunk of his car, to expedite getting his free-lance product to the newspapers. Weegee worked mostly at nightclubs; he listened closely to broadcasts and often beat authorities to the scene.
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 at the Metropolitan Opera (The Critic, 1943), turned out to have been staged.[1][2]
Most of his notable photographs were taken with very basic press photographer equipment and methods of the era, a 4x5 Speed Graphic camera preset at f/16, @ 1/1500 of a second with flashbulbs and a set focus distance of ten feet.[citation needed] 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 naturalistic television police drama series and a band led by the New York experimental musician John Zorn.
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. He was an uncredited special effects consultant[citation needed] and credited still photographer for Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. His accent was one of the influences for the accent of the title character in the film, played by Peter Sellers.[citation needed]
In the 1950s and 1960s, Weegee experimented with panoramic photographs, photo distortions and photography through prisms. He made a famous photograph of Marilyn Monroe in which her face is grotesquely distorted yet still recognizable. For the 1950 movie The Yellow Cab Man, Weegee contributed a sequence in which automobile traffic is wildly distorted; he is credited for this as "Luigi" in the film's opening credits. He also traveled widely in Europe in the 1960s, where he photographed nude subjects.
In 1980 Weegee’s widow, Wilma Wilcox, Sidney Kaplan, Aaron Rose and Larry Silver formed The Weegee Portfolio Incorporated to create an exclusive collection of photographic prints made from Weegee’s original negatives [3]
The lead character of Bernzy, played by Joe Pesci, in the 1992 film The Public Eye, was strongly inspired by Fellig.
Further reading
- Weegee by Weegee (1961, autobiography)
- Miles Barth, Weegee's World
- Kerry William Purcell, Weegee (Phaidon, 2004)
References
External links
- New York Times, June 9, 2006, "'Unknown Weegee,' on Photographer Who Made the Night Noir"
- New York Times, June 20, 2008, "Crime Was Weegee’s Oyster"
- Wired News, June 29, 2009, "‘You Gotta Get It’ — Words of Wisdom From Weegee"
- Weegee's World: Life, Death and the Human Drama
- Weegee Photographs Commercial link
- Arthur 'Weegee' Fellig at the Internet Movie Database
