Text from John Szarkowski, Looking at Photographs

The best newspaper photographers have understood intuitively that it is not their function to interpret the news; they have left this task to the caption- writers, who ascribe to pictures whatever moral, political, social, or historical meaning seems appropriate in light of the temper of the moment. The function of news photographers is to give us the look and the smell of events that we did not witness.

The importance of these events is sometimes more symbolic than real. It has been pointed out often enough that the significant fresh news of any given day could be engraved on a dime, but this does not vitiate the fact that we expect the daily paper to reassure us that the world is still with us, filled with disasters, beauty queens, purposeful dedication, corruption, wealth and poverty, winners and losers, and auspicious occasions. In the case of most of these it is better to be shown than told. Sports historians will read the box scores, but the rest of us would rather see - for the ten-thousandth time - one more shortstop suspended in mid-air above the sliding runner, making the relay to first base.

The very best news photographs have been the disaster pictures. It is likely that no medium, visual or literary, has accumulated so rich an archive of destruction - whether the result of bad luck, violent sin, or divine retribution - as news photography has in a mere half century.

Probably few policemen have seen as much violent sin as Weegee did. During his best years as a photographer he lived in a room across the street from Manhattan police headquarters waiting for the inevitable call on his police radio that would announce another gangland execution, or botched holdup, or crime of passion. It must be assumed that he was a serious and willing student of his subject - mere professional competence would not have produced the wonderfully intimate and knowledgeable photographs that he made.

Weegee came to be such a virtuoso at photographing violence that he developed variations on the standard themes. Before he could make "Their First Murder", he had to turn away from the bloody body in the street and toward the spectators. He had learned from experience that the audience was often as terrific as the event.