Weegee

(American, 1899–1968)

Weegee was an Austrian-born American street photographer known for his often gruesome black-and-white images documenting murder and turmoil of New York City in the 1930s and 1940s. He gained a reputation for having an almost mystical sense of when and where illegal acts would occur—aided by his portable police-band shortwave radio—and was often the first photographer at crime scenes. “To me a photograph is a page from life, and that being the case, it must be real,” he once said. Born Arthur Fellig on June 12, 1899 in Zloczów, Austria-Hungary, the artist acquired his pseudonym from the phonetic spelling of Ouija, a fortune-telling game. He arrived in United States in 1940 and worked his way up from darkroom technician to photojournalist, eventually attracting the attention of the legendary museum director Edward Steichen. Weegee published his first book, Naked City, in 1945, a collection of his urban photography that would go on to influence countless artists, notably including Diane Arbus. Having achieved success in both the realms of popular media and fine art photography, Weegee died on December 26, 1968 in New York, NY at the age of 69.