Weegee

Jumping Tiger (Triptych)

1950

While many first associate Weegee (aka Arthur Fellig) with New York City crime scenes, perhaps a broader and more consistent theme is that of spectacle and/or urban entertainment. The origins of his nick-name and reputation date back to the 1930s when he became the first New York City press photographer to obtain permission to install a police radio in his car. Following the city's first responders and documenting their duties, Weegee had unprecedented access to New York’s fires, crimes, debaucheries and of course, murders. During the first decade of his career these unflinching urban tragedy or crime images paid Weegee's bills, but as he became more financially independent he was more inspired to pursue photographs on his own agenda. While his oeuvre is vast, Weegee was especially drawn to entertainment: nightlife, circuses, the theatre, showgirls, city thrills, the cinema etc. Some of Weegee's most dynamic and tender (and under-appreciated!) images are related to simply having fun (in a crowd). He was not confined to one neighbourhood or demographic. He captured action, faces and events from Coney Island to the Bowery and Greenwich Village, to Times Square and Harlem. In “A Trip To Mars,” Weegee depicts a multi-generational group crowding around a large telescope...

Arthur Felling, better known as Weegee (1899-1968) is America's premiere photojournalist and one of the last century's most influential photographers. He would become famous, beyond...

The inimitable and notorious photographer known as Weegee, (aka. Arthur Fellig) exposed the scope of New York’s nightlife; whether it was celebrating high-culture or low-life revelle...

Weegee (1899-1968) was equally fascinated and inspired by cinema and all of its tangents, from Hollywood movie stars to ordinary civilians going to the movies. While Weegee is typically associated with crime/disaster images, the broad theme of "entertainment" is a major component of his oeuvre. An interesting and provocative sub-genre of his cinema-related work are his images of couples (often heavy-petting) in movie theatres. Recent scholarship has established that many of Weegee's supposed clandestine images were actually staged or arranged with friends or co-operative strangers. Nevertheless, Weegee created these photographs in the dark with an array of clever techniques including infrared film, filtered flashbulb and triangular prism lens. Employed in shots such as this one, the prism lens would allow the artist to “see around corners,” useful at times when his subjects were in compromising locations. These images of kissing couples, Weegee wrote in 1959, were “his best seller, year in and year out.” "Sailor and GIrl at the Movies...