Weegee

Weegee was born Ascher (later modified to Usher) Fellig in Złoczów (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), near Lemberg in Galicia-Lodomeria, a region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His given name was changed to Arthur after he immigrated with his family to New York in 1909. The father of the family, Bernard Fellig, emigrated in 1908, followed in 1909 by his wife and their four children, including "Usher Felik", as his name was spelled on the steerage passenger list of the steamship, Kaiserin Auguste Victoria. In Brooklyn, where they settled, he took numerous odd jobs, including working as a street photographer of children on his ponyWeegee's autobiography and as an assistant to a commercial photographer. In 1924 he was hired as a darkroom technician by Acme Newspictures (later United Press International Photos). He left Acme in 1935 to become a freelance photographer. Describing his beginnings, Weegee stated:

In my particular case I didn't wait 'til somebody gave me a job or something, I went and created a job for myself—freelance photographer. And what I did, anybody else can do. What I did simply was this: I went down to Manhattan Police Headquarters and for two years I worked without a police card or any kind of credentials. When a story came over a police teletype, I would go to it. The idea was I sold the pictures to the newspapers. And naturally, I picked a story that meant something.Fellig, Arthur. [http://bombsite.com/issues/20/articles/941 "Weegee Interview"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130617021300/http://bombsite.com/issues/20/articles/941 |date=June 17, 2013 }} BOMB Magazine Summer, 1987.

He worked at night and competed with the police to be first at the scene of a crime, selling his photographs to tabloids and photographic agencies.[http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=1842 Weegee] MoMA Collection, New York. His photographs, centered around Manhattan police headquarters, were soon published by the Daily News and other tabloids, as well as more upscale publication such as Life magazine.{{cite book|last=Cohen | first=Daniel | year=2000 | publisher=Twenty-First Century Books | title=Yellow Journalism | isbn=0761315020 | page=77}}

In 1957, after developing diabetes, he moved in with Wilma Wilcox, a Quaker social worker whom he had known since the 1940s, and who cared for him and then cared for his work.Roberta Smith (January 19, 2012), [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/arts/design/weegee-at-international-center-of-photography-review.html He Made Blood and Guts Familiar and Fabulous] The New York Times. He traveled extensively in Europe until 1964, working for the London Daily Mirror and on a variety of photography, film, lecture, and book projects.Bonanos, Christopher, Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous, Henry Holt, 2016, chapters 23–25. On December 26, 1968, Weegee died in New York at the age of 69.Bonanos, p. 315.

The origin of Fellig's pseudonym is uncertain. One of his earliest jobs was in the photo lab of The New York Times, where (in a reference to the tool used to wipe down prints) he was nicknamed "squeegee boy". Later, during his employment with Acme Newspictures, his skill and ingenuity in developing prints on the run (e.g., in a subway car) earned him the name "Mr. Squeegee".{{cite journal |last=Kosner |first=Edward |title=Shots in the Dark |journal=The New York Review of Books |volume=65 |issue=19 |pages=44–45 |date=December 6, 2018}} He may subsequently have been dubbed "Weegee"—a phonetic rendering of Ouija—because his instant and seemingly prescient arrivals at scenes of crimes or other emergencies seemed as magical as a Ouija board.

{{Main|ƒ/8 and be there}}

Most of his notable photographs were taken with very basic press photographer equipment and methods of the era, a 4×5 Speed Graphic camera preset at f/16 at 1/200 of a second, with flashbulbs and a set focus distance of ten feet.[https://books.google.com/books?id=U3qXOp1iT6QC&pg=PA404 Goldberg, Viki, Photography in print: writings from 1816 to the present, University of New Mexico Press, 1988, p.414] He was a self-taught photographer with no formal training.Bonanos, ch. 2 and 3. He is often said—incorrectly—to have developed his photographs in a makeshift darkroom in the trunk of his car.Bonanos, p. 99. While Fellig would shoot a variety of subjects and individuals, he also had a sense of what sold best:

Names make news. There's a fight between a drunken couple on Third Avenue or Ninth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen, nobody cares. It's just a barroom brawl. But if society has a fight in a Cadillac on Park Avenue and their names are in the Social Register, this makes news and the papers are interested in that.Fellig, Arthur. [http://bombsite.com/issues/20/articles/941 "Weegee Interview"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130617021300/http://bombsite.com/issues/20/articles/941 |date=June 17, 2013 }}BOMB Magazine Summer, 1987

Weegee is spuriously credited for answering "f/8 and be there" when asked about his photographic technique.{{cite web |last1=North |first1=D. Travis |title=f/8 and Be There – What We Can Learn From WeeGee's Philosophy |url=http://www.shutterphoto.net/article/f8-and-be-there-what-we-can-learn-from-weegees-philosophy/ |website=Shutter Photo |access-date=13 June 2016 |date=22 September 2011}}

Whether or not he actually said it, the saying has become so widespread in photographic circles as to have become a cliché.{{cite news |last1=Newman |first1=Joe |title='F/8 and Be There'—as True Now as It Was in Weegee's Day |url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-newman/f8-and-be-there----as-tru_b_5486730.html |access-date=13 June 2016 |publisher=Huffington Post |date=11 August 2014 |quote=The legendary street photographer Arthur "Weegee" Fellig is often credited with first coining the phrase "f/8 and be there."}}{{cite web |title=f/8 And Be There |url=https://www.adorama.com/alc/0013109/article/f8-And-Be-There |website=Adorama Learning Center |publisher=Adorama camera |access-date=10 October 2018 |date=21 June 2011}}

Yet other sources, in mentioning his standard technique (f/16, Pressbulb25, focus at 10'), illustrate the probable fiction behind the mention of 'f/8'. A book written about Weegee, Weegee's Secrets published in 1953, says:

For the record, Weegee shot the majority of his photos from 6-feet at f/22 and 10-feet at f16. These smaller f/stops provided excellent depth of field. When hunting for photos, Weegee would stalk the streets with his camera set to 10-feet and f/16. This distance was useful for shooting people full-length. He also carried a flashlight for adjusting his camera settings in the dark.

Some of Weegee's photos, like the juxtaposition of society grandes dames in ermines and tiaras and a glowering street woman at the Metropolitan Opera (The Critic, 1943), were later revealed to have been staged.[https://web.archive.org/web/20080405232316/http://www.nga.gov/press/exh/252/252walltxt.pdf The Streets of New York] (catalog of National Gallery of Art show){{cite web |url=http://museum.icp.org/museum/collections/special/weegee/weegee09.html |title=Weegee's World: The Opera }}

File:Weegee the famous.TIF

In 1938, Fellig became the only New York freelance newspaper photographer with a permit to have a portable police-band shortwave radio. Weegee worked mostly at night; he listened closely to broadcasts and often beat authorities to the scene.Bonanos, p. 100–101.

Five of his photographs were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1943. These works were included in its exhibition Action Photography.{{cite web |url=http://museum.icp.org/museum/collections/special/weegee/chronology.html |title=Weegee's World: Chronology International Centre of Photography |access-date=June 13, 2010 |archive-date=September 19, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100919160229/http://museum.icp.org/museum/collections/special/weegee/chronology.html |url-status=dead }} He was later included in "50 Photographs by 50 Photographers", another MoMA show organized by photographer Edward Steichen, and he lectured at the New School for Social Research. Advertising and editorial assignments for magazines followed, including Life and beginning in 1945, Vogue.

Naked City (1945) was his first book of photographs. Film producer Mark Hellinger bought the rights to the title from Weegee. In 1948, Weegee's aesthetic formed the foundation for Hellinger's film The Naked City. It was based on a gritty 1948 story written by Malvin Wald about the investigation into a model's murder in New York. Wald was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay, co-written with screenwriter Albert Maltz, who would later be blacklisted in the McCarthy era.[https://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2008-03-09-wald-obit_N.htm 'Naked City' writer Malvin Wald, USA Today, 3/09/2008] Later the title was used again for a naturalistic television police drama series, and in the 1980s, it was adopted by a band, Naked City, led by the New York experimental musician John Zorn.{{citation needed|date=June 2017}}

According to the commentary by director Robert Wise, Weegee appeared in the 1949 film The Set-Up, ringing the bell at the boxing match.{{citation needed|date=June 2017}}

Weegee experimented with 16mm filmmaking himself beginning in 1941 and worked in the Hollywood industry from 1946 to the early 1960s, as an actor and a consultant. He was an uncredited special effects consultant{{citation |ref=moca117 |url=http://www.moca.org/audio/blog/?cat=11 |title=The Curve: A Tour of Naked Hollywood |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120121173723/http://www.moca.org/audio/blog/?cat=117 |archive-date=2012-01-21 |access-date=2015-12-05 |url-status=dead}} and credited stills 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.{{Additional citation needed|date=October 2024|reason=It just says he consulted on the film.}}

In the 1950s and 1960s, Weegee experimented with panoramic photographs, photo distortions and photography through prisms. Using a plastic lens, he made a famous photograph of Marilyn Monroe in which her face is grotesquely distorted yet still recognizable.{{cite web |url=https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/marilyn-monroe-distortion-43 |title=Weegee [Marilyn Monroe distortion] |website=International Center of Photography|date=February 24, 2016 }} 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 titles. He also traveled widely in Europe in the 1960s, where he photographed nude subjects. In London he befriended pornographer Harrison Marks and the model Pamela Green, whom he photographed.{{citation needed|date=June 2017}}

In 1962,Bonanos, p. 294–297. Weegee starred as himself in a "Nudie Cutie" exploitation film, intended to be a pseudo-documentary of his life. Called The 'Imp'probable Mr. Wee Gee, it saw Fellig apparently falling in love with a shop-window dummy that he follows to Paris, all the while pursuing or photographing various women.[http://imdb.com/title/tt0220948 The 'Imp'probable Mr. Wee Gee], Internet Movie Database

Weegee can be seen as the American counterpart to Brassaï, who photographed Paris street scenes at night. Weegee's themes of nudists, circus performers, freaks and street people were later taken up and developed by Diane Arbus in the early 1960s.

In 1980, Weegee's companion Wilma Wilcox, along with 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.{{cite web |url=http://amber-online.com/sections/side-gallery/pages/weegee-portfolio-an-interview |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090216022419/http://amber-online.com/sections/side-gallery/pages/weegee-portfolio-an-interview |url-status=dead |archive-date=February 16, 2009 |title=Side Gallery - Weegee Portfolio - Interview with Sid Kaplan - Amber Online |date=February 16, 2009 }} As a bequest, Wilma Wilcox donated the entire Weegee archive – 16,000 photographs and 7,000 negatives – to the International Center of Photography in New York. This 1993 gift and transfer of copyright became the source for several exhibitions and books including Weegee's World, edited by Miles Barth (1997), and Unknown Weegee, edited by Cynthia Young (2006). The first and largest exhibition was the 329-image Weegee's World: Life, Death and the Human Drama, mounted in 1997. It was followed in 2002 by Weegee's Trick Photography, a show of distorted or otherwise caricatured images, and four years later by Unknown Weegee, a survey that emphasized his less violent, post-tabloid photographs.

In 2009, the Kunsthalle Vienna held an exhibition called Elevator to the Gallows. The exhibition combined modern installations by Banks Violette with Weegee's nocturnal photography.{{cite web |url=http://www.kunsthallewien.at/#/en/exhibitions/elevator-gallows |title=Kunsthalle Wien :: Home }}

In 2012, ICP opened another Weegee exhibition titled, Murder Is My Business. Also in 2012, an exhibition called Weegee: The Naked City,{{cite web|url=http://mamm-mdf.ru/en/exhibitions/weegee/|title=Weegee: The Naked City, MAMM}} opened at Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow. Weegee's autobiography, originally published in 1961 as Weegee by Weegee and long out of print, was retitled as Weegee: The Autobiography and republished in 2013.{{cite web |url=https://devault-gravesagency.weebly.com/weegee-the-autobiography.html|title=Devault-Graves blog }}

From April 2013 through July 2014, the Flatz Museum in Dornbirn, Austria presented Weegee. How to photograph a corpse, based on relevant photographs from Weegee's portfolio, including many vintage prints. Original newspapers and magazines, dating back to the time where the photos were taken, accompanied the photographs.{{cite web |url=http://www.flatzmuseum.at/News-Anzeigen.7467.0.html?&no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5BpS%5D=1439787203&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=6258&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=12305 |title=FLATZ Museum |access-date=November 1, 2015 |archive-date=March 4, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304214419/http://www.flatzmuseum.at/News-Anzeigen.7467.0.html?&no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5BpS%5D=1439787203&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=6258&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=12305 |url-status=dead }}

• The 1992 film The Public Eye is loosely based on Weegee, and some of the photos used in the film were taken by Fellig.{{cite news |title=PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A TABLOID PHOTOGRAPHER |url=http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1992-10-14-9204030099-story.html |access-date=10 October 2018 |publisher=The Chicago Tribune |date=14 October 1992 |quote=Bernzy himself seems to be based on the real-life figure of Arthur Fellig, who, under the name Weegee, created some of the most startling and vivid photographs to come out of the urban maelstrom.}}
• The season 6 The X-Files episode "Tithonus", written by Vince Gilligan, was inspired by Fellig.
• The 2014 film Nightcrawler was also inspired by Weegee.Friend, Tad. [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/10/rembrandt-lighting "Rembrandt Lighting"] The New Yorker (November 10, 2014)

• Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL{{Cite news|url=https://www.artic.edu/collection?q=%22weegee%22%20|title = Discover Art & Artists | the Art Institute of Chicago|newspaper = The Art Institute of Chicago}}
• Museum of Modern Art, New York
• [https://thejewishmuseum.org/collection/artist/weegee-born-arthur-fellig-american-b-poland-1899-1968 The Jewish Museum]
• Rijksmuseum Amsterdam{{cite web |url=https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/search?f=1&p=1&ps=12&maker=Arthur+Fellig |title=Search – Rijksmuseum |work=Rijksmuseum}}
• International Center of Photography[http://www.icp.org/museum/exhibitions/weegee-1899-1968 "Major Holdings: Weegee (1899–1968)"] on the International Center of Photography website

• The Public Eye – Filmmaker Howard Franklin was unable to secure the rights to Fellig's life story, so he created a fictionalized version.{{cite web |last1=Greco |first1=John |title=The Public Eye (1992) Howard Franklin |website=Twenty Four Frames |date=February 6, 2018 |access-date=10 October 2018 |url=https://twentyfourframes.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/the-public-eye-1992-howard-franklin/ |quote=Written and directed by Howard Franklin, The Public Eye is a film very loosely based on the life of tabloid photographer, Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee. Franklin apparently could not obtain the rights to Weegee's story, so he wrote a fictionalized tale about a cigar smoking New York City tabloid photographer who had access to a police radio which always made him first on the scene. In the film, the character is called Leon Bernstein or Bernzy or, as his byline reads, The Great Bernzini.}}
• Ƒ/8 and be there

{{Reflist|30em}}

• Barth, Miles; Bergala, Alain; and Handy, Ellen. Weegee's World. Boston: Little Brown, 1997.
• Lee, Anthony W. and Meyer, Richard. Weegee and Naked City. (Defining Moments in American Photography.)
• Purcell, Kerry William. Weegee. (Phaidon, 2004).
• Weegee. Weegee by Weegee (1961 (revised, reprinted, and retitled as Weegee: The Autobiography, 2013), autobiography).

{{external links|date=June 2021}}

• [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/arts/design/20expl.html New York Times, June 20, 2008, "Crime Was Weegee's Oyster"]
• [https://www.wired.com/rawfile/2009/06/weegee/ Wired News, June 29, 2009, {{"'}}You Gotta Get It'—Words of Wisdom from Weegee"]
• [http://www.icp.org/exhibitions/weegees-world-life-death-and-the-human-drama Weegee's World: Life, Death and the Human Drama]
• [http://emuseum.icp.org/view/people/asitem/id/171 Weegee archive on eMuseum.icp.org, all works © International Center of Photography]
• {{IMDb name|id=0271460|name=Arthur "Weegee" Fellig}}
• [http://bombmagazine.org/articles/weegee/ BOMB Magazine self-interview with Arthur Fellig (Summer 1987)]

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Category:1899 births

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Category:Emigrants from Austria-Hungary to the United States

Category:People from Zolochiv, Lviv Oblast

Category:Jews from New York (state)

Category:20th-century American photographers

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