Text from The Encyclopedia of Photography (1986)

Weegee, (Arthur Fellig)
American, 1899-1968

Although Weegee photographed a wide panorama of urban life, the documentation of violent crimes, disasters, and their survivors and onlookers was Weegee's specialty. His work for New York City newspapers and photosyndicates in the 1930s and 1940s brought him international attention. His best-known images have a rawness and spontaneity rarely encountered.

Weegee was born Usher Fellig in Zloczew, Austria (now in Poland). His name was changed to Arthur at Ellis Island when he came with his family to live on New York's Lower East Side in 1910. He quit school at age 14 to help support his family, working at odd jobs and as an itinerant street photographer and assistant to a commercial photographer.

Fellig had been a passport photographer for three years when he was hired in 1924 as a darkroom technician by Acme Newspictures (soon to become United Press International Photos). He left Acme in 1935 to freelance as a police beat photographer on the night shift. He used a standard 4" X 5" Speed Graphic camera with large-bulb flash to produce photographs that were published in nearly all of New York's papers over the next ten years. From 1940 to 1945 he was a staff photographer at PM magazine.

Fellig gained a reputation for knowing where disaster would strike next, hence the name "Weegee," a reference to the fortune-teller's Ouija board. He was aided in scooping competing photographers by carefully monitoring police and fire-department radio dispatches. In 1938 he was the first photographer to obtain permission to install police radio equipment in his car.

Weegee had a gift for self-promotion which led to his stamping the backs of his prints with "Credit Photo: Weegee the Famous" in the early 1940s. He did not become truly famous, however, until the publication of his book, Naked City, the rights to which were bought by Hollywood for a film and television series. This book contained his crime photography and images of New York City's lonely and dispossessed. In addition to the hard-flash, frontal shots that were his trademark, he made photographs with infrared flash and film, which allowed him to work as unobtrusively as possible.

For several years from the mid-1940s on, Weegee abandoned crime photos and concentrated on advertising assignments for Vogue, Holiday, Life, Look, and Fortune. He lived in Hollywood from 1947 to 1952, working as a consultant and bit player in films. He began a series of photo-caricatures and photo-distortions of celebrities and politicians. This work was not greeted with the same enthusiasm Naked City had received, but Weegee continued his experiments. He completed several short films in the 1950s using kaleidoscopic lenses, mirrors, and other distorting techniques. A mass of contradictions, Weegee's praise at this time was reserved for Atget, Cartier-Bresson, and W. Eugene Smith.

Weegee published several other books, including Naked Hollywood and Weegee by Weegee, his autobiography. He lectured on his work throughout the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union. He was a neglected figure at the time of his death.