By monitoring police and fire-department radio calls, Fellig was able to obtain a large number of dramatic photographs.
The
ability to be the first photographer on the scene of a major incident, resulted
in him being given the nickname, Weegee (a reference to the fortune-teller's
Ouija board).
Arthur
Fellig "Weegee" his Speed Graphic and cigar.
1944
He
captured tenement infernos, car crashes, and gangland executions. He found
washed-up lounge singers and teenage murder suspects in paddy wagons and
photographed them at their most vulnerable or as he put it, their most human. He
caught couples kissing on their beach blankets on Coney Island and the
late-night voyeurs on lifeguard stands watching them. And everywhere he went, he
snatched images of people sleeping: drunks on park benches, whole families on
Lower East Side fire escapes, men and women snoring in movie theaters. He was
the supreme chronicler of the city at night.
Born Arthur Fellig in what is now the Ukraine, Weegee moved to New York's Lower
East Side in 1910 at the age of eleven. By fifteen he had left home, supporting
himself through odd jobs and sleeping wherever he could find a place: the
benches of Penn Station and Bryant Park (to which he would later return, camera
in hand), or the Bowery's flophouses. He became a street photographer's
assistant and later a roaming photographer himself, snapping pictures of
children to sell to their poor but proud parents. During the 1920s he worked and
often lived in the darkrooms of the New York Times and Acme Newspictures,
and soon he was filling in for photographers when they couldn't make their late
shift. By the thirties, his intimate chronicles of disasters both natural and
man-made were being featured in PM, Life, Popular Photography, and all of the
New York dailies. He went on to become one of the most prolific and famous news
photographers of the century. His first book, Naked City, which helped
established his fame and is still in print today, was published in 1945.
Original vintage prints
were offered during the TEFAF 2016 in Maastricht Netherlands by Daniel Blau
Munich for affordable prices beginning at 5.000 euros up to 35.000 euros.
left: Jane
Mansfield. Hollywood 1951
Photographed by Arthur Fellig "Weegee"
Photo
middle: Almost immediately after shooting his pictures, Weegee developed
the film and wrote on the typewriter his article sitting behind the trunk of his
Chevrolet.
Fellig's
photographs appeared in nearly all of New York's newspapers including New
York Tribune, New York Post, World-Telegram, Daily News, Journal-American, PM
and the New York Sun. In 1941 the Photo League put on an exhibition of his work,
Weegee: Murder is My Business.
After the publication of his highly successful book, Naked City (1945). Fellig
abandoned crime photos and concentrated on advertising assignments for Life,
Vogue, Holiday, Look and Fortune. Other books by Fellig included Weegee People
(1946), Naked Hollywood (1953) and Weegee by Weegee (1961). Arthur Fellig died
on 26th December, 1968.
More about Weegee's Anniversary Speed Graphic Press Camera