USA: Graphic images of the gritty underbelly of New York in the 1930's and 40's, complete with mob hits and gangster arrests, is featured in a retrospective of legendary photographer Weegee now showing at the International Center of Photography

Record ID: 259068

  • Title: USA: Graphic images of the gritty underbelly of New York in the 1930's and 40's, complete with mob hits and gangster arrests, is featured in a retrospective of legendary photographer Weegee now showing at the International Center of Photography
  • Date: 20th January 2012
  • Summary: WEEGEE POSING IN A MOCK MUGSHOT WEEGEE PHOTO BODY OF PETER MANCUSO, KILLED IN 1941 OUTSIDE A SCHOOL
  • Embargoed: 4th February 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa, Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Arts,People
  • Reuters ID: LVAE38XWXTY8QC383PDAUJHWAQ34
  • Story Text: He cruised the dark streets of depression-era New York at night in his Chevy, armed only with a camera and lots of chutzpah, seeking out the latest murder scene or mob arrests.
    His name was Weegee, and his graphic images of dead bodies, often lying on sidewalks with blood flowing from them, perhaps a gun lying just feet way, have become iconic images of a time romanticized by the crime novels and films of that era and since.
    Now the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York has opened a retrospective of his work called "Weegee: Murder is my Business".
    Weegee, who was born Usher Felig in Austria in 1899, moved with his family to America when he was 10-years-old and was raised in the Jewish slums of New York's Lower East Side.
    As a young man Weegee didn't immediately take to photography. His career in photojournalism only began when he was in his thirties.
    According to Brian Wallis, Chief Curator at the ICP, Weegee soon figured out a way to be the best crime photographer in the city, styling himself as "a kind of photo-detective."
    "During the 1930's when Weegee began photography was kind of the heyday of the gangster, in literature, in film and to some extent in tabloid news photography."
    "He created this kind of hard-boiled persona with the fedora pulled down over his eyes and the sort of tough talking captions that he would write, and just his imperviousness to marching into a scene of a murder and casing it out and taking a very dramatic picture," added Wallis.
    To do this well, Weegee rented a room across the street from a police station, where he would stay up at night listening to police scanners to get a jump on the competition. The ICP has installed a reproduction of Weegee's New York apartment, complete with an ashtray filled with cigar butts and a kind of trophy wall of newspaper cut-outs over his bed.
    "He would either sprint down there or get a taxi to the crime scene, often get there before the police. He worked exclusively at night with new flashbulb technology so that accounts in part for that sort of startled expressions of some of the spectators," said Wallis.
    What he got were very graphic but also very creative images of murders, arrests, fires and even the sometimes touching portraits of the people of New York's poorer neighborhoods.
    "He always looked for the best angle, so you'll see in some of the comparisons that we have, that his pictures have just an edge to them. But he also was looking for the human drama," said Wallis.
    Wallis said the legacy of Weegee is hard to pin down. But one thing his work did was to start a debate in journalism about what it means to represent violence in news and where the limits lie.
    "Today we still question whether it's appropriate to run pictures of the murder victim or their family when they first see the body or something like that. Those questions were debated in the 1930's and Weegee's work certainly raises those issues and they're still germane today."
    "Weegee: Murder is my Business" opens to the public on January 20th (Friday) and runs through September 2, 2012.
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