New York's Genius Photographer of the Streets - Arthur "Weegee" Fellig

Arthur Fellig, better known as "Weegee", looked like any other sleazy New York City tabloid crime photographer, recording often grisly crime scenes in stark black and white. From the thirties to the fifties, "Weegee the Famous", as he dubbed himself, took photos at an estimated 5,000 murder scenes. A short, squat, uneducated, and unkempt man with a stump of a cigar always jammed in his mouth, Fellig was an artist despite himself.

"Weegee the Famous"

While his photographs went far beyond the snatch-and-grab genre, Weegee had no pretensions. He roamed the city's nightlife in a 1938 Chevy, which also served as his office and photography studio. Because he had finagled his way into becoming the only civilian in New York City with a car equipped with a police radio, Weegee often arrived at crime scenes before the police. After his arrival at each scene, he'd take his photos, often with an infrared camera, and then he'd develop the pictures inside the darkroom that was actually his car's trunk.

Because of his knack at being in the right place at the right time, Arthur Fellig, a Russian immigrant from the Lower East Side, nicknamed himself "Weegee", an intentional misspelling of "ouija" as in a fortuneteller's "oiuja board." As a young photographer, corpse photographs became his bread and butter, selling them to both tabloids and insurance companies.

Edward Steichen

Weegee's shocking yet beautiful photographs eventually gained him a following which led him to fine art photography legend Edward Steichen, who was also a leading light of the 1940s New York art world's movers and shakers.

In 1948, Steichen hosted a showing of Weegee's photographs at the Museum of Modern Art. This showing became the official "discovery" of Arthur "Weegee" Fellig as one of the world's great photographic artists.

This event then led to Weegee's bestselling coffee table art book "Naked City", a collection of his photos. The book established his artistic legacy.

In Vogue

In the fifties, Vogue Magazine had even hired the decidedly unglamorous Fellig to be a staff photographer. For his own creative satisfaction, he began experimenting with purposely distorted portraits of celebrities, including Marilyn Monroe. He called these photographic caricatures.

Stanley Kubrick

In the sixties, director Stanley Kubrick, a big Weegee fan, hired him to be a still photographer on the set of his masterpiece, "Dr. Strangelove." Actor Peter Sellers, in fact, modeled his Dr. Strangelove voice after Weegee's distinct middle European accent.

In 1968, Arthur "Weegee" Fellig died, but his work lives on.

SOURCES:

"Unknown Weegee", Holland Cotter, New York Times

"Weegee", Internet Movie Database

"Shot in the dark", Laurie Mechling, CBC