The Business of Murder: How the Cult Photography of WeeGee Changed the Crime Scenes of New York
Weegee, the photographer whose images came to define New York in the 1930s and 40s, is now often credited with ushering in the age of tabloid culture, while at the same time being revered for elevating the sordid side of human life to that of high art.
He was born Usher Fellig in 1899, in modern day Ukraine. He became Arthur Fellig when the family came to America in 1909. Working for Acme Newspictures, in the darkroom, then as a news photographer specialising in fires, crashes and murders, he was nicknamed Weegee - a reference to the Ouija board and an uncanny skill at being in the right place when a story broke. He lived behind New York’s central police station and was allowed to carry a police radio in his car.
Side Gallery in Newcastle, part of Amber Film & Photography Collective, organised the first UK tour of Weegee's work in the early 1980s, around the time that Sid Kaplan was printing the Weegee Portfolio. During the 80’s, Amber developed a strong relationship with Weegee's widow, Wilma Wilcox and The AmberSide Collection holds a significant number of the prints Kaplan made. In 2008 Amber's Pat McCarthy interviewed Kaplan.
KING WEEGEE
Sid Kaplan: The first time I ever heard of Weegee was when I was about 12 or 13 years old. They did a lot of photography annuals back then, there was a picture in there titled Weegee and Friend, the way he’s been stereotyped: right next to a very, very good looking woman in a swimsuit on the beach somewhere in California. I did find out later that it was Peter Gowland that took the picture, so it was one of his models. At the time I was mostly interested in the photographic technique. In all those photo annuals there was always some there.
They used to have an organization in town called the PMDA (Photographic Manufacturers’ and Distributors’ Association) where they would set up a convention showing off their latest software, hardware, chemistry — anything that had to do with image making at that time, they had booths for. One of the booths was called Wabash - they manufactured flash bulbs - they had a little booklet called Weegee’s Secrets… I don’t know how many dozens of times I read Weegee’s Secrets, every page of it. And I always put in my Wabash number 11 flash bulb at that time. You know, in the text it was always: ‘I couldn’t have gotten this picture without the Wabash flash bulbs.’. Weegee was there signing books: the event being billed as Come and meet King Weegee. If you had any questions, Weegee could answer them in the time he was able to write his name...
I walked up to Weegee like a kid would walk up to Babe Ruth. He was one of my biggest heroes and that’s the first time I met him. At the time, I was also part of a juvenile club with the Police Athletic League, an institution in New York for kids so they wouldn’t get in trouble on the street. They had a camera club and at that same expo with an on going competition where people could vote for what they thought was the best picture. There were some very serious prizes like a couple of rolls of film or maybe some Wabash flash bulbs. Weegee started coming by and of course voted for what he thought was the best picture, which happened to be one of mine. When I thanked him, he said something to the effect of “Kid, you gotta good future ahead of you,” and then very, very deadpan, “Hey kid, tell me, have you ever thought about stamp collecting?” The prize was a DeJour exposure meter, which, at the time, I thought it was kind of an insult. You know, “Real men don’t need light meters!” If you can’t judge your own exposure without a light meter you don’t deserve to have a picture.The way it was with the photography community, our paths were constantly crossing. I called him Weegee and then I got a little bit bolder and called him Uncle Weegee, which he didn’t say anything about, but he did not give me a nice look.
ENCOUNTERS IN THE PHOTO DISTRICT
Sometimes I’d see some of Weegee’s pictures and I immediately knew in what street corner it was taken. The identity with his work was always there. But I was constantly running into him and after a while he kind of got used to me. At the time also he was working on a project called The Village. And for me, the Village was a very hip place to be. I was there with the camera and I started taking pictures in the area and Weegee was photographing the same areas: the coffee houses, (not so much the bars) but the chess houses, poetry readings and, of course, Washington Square Park. There were always events happening there. And also with the same people. Pay-the-rent parties were a big thing, where there would be music, wine and just a fee of something at the door because they needed the money for rent. I would go to a lot of pay-the-rent parties to take pictures… once at two of them, Weegee was also there. The only difference was, I knew too many people and would join them eventually in the corner sipping cheap wine, forgetting about taking pictures after a while. But in constantly running into him in those places, he knew I was taking pictures.
It’s now June ’56. I’ve graduated high school and it’s either find a job or go to the military, so I wind up in a small studio in what is called the Theatre District on 46th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenue. Weegee was living on 47th between 9th and 10th, so he was in the neighbourhood too. One of the big industries at the time was girlie pictures. The amount of money that Playboy was paying for the centrefolds was $300 back then, a lot of photographers wanted to get a piece of that kind of money. A lot of photographers who were hurting for money would come in to the place I worked, there’d be a seamless background and a naked or a semi-naked girl would come on the thing and they would all congregate and get angles of them. Weegee loved going into those places. If the word was out that Weegee was going to be there, a lot more people would come. My job there at the time was rolling down the seamless paper. I also had a light meter, so if somebody would say, “I got ASA 200 film,” I would say look at the light meter and say, “1/60th at F5.”. I remember seeing Weegee out of the corner of my eye taking pictures of all these guys with the camera’s, jockeying for position, off on the side was their model.
The only problem with the studio job was I wasn’t getting paid, so I wound up in a another studio, working as an assistant for a photographer doing commercial work. There was another photographer sharing the studio whose work I knew and loved and respected. It was Lou Stettner and he had an assistant by the name of Aaron, as in Rose. Stettner was having some problems financially and he couldn’t pay Aaron any more and Danny, the guy I was with, he wasn’t as busy as he thought, so him and Lou Stettner decided what they were going to do is share an assistant.
I had no idea at the time that Stettner and Weegee knew each other. I remember Stettner on the phone saying “Weegee is sick,” and “He’s in the hospital.” They were pretty close. When Weegee’s prescriptions needed filling, as the assistant, I was the guy to run it down to Weegee’s house. “You’re Stettner’s assistant?” Wedge said the first time I walked in there. So he was maybe a little bit more polite. He was the first guy who I’d ever seen that sick and went through a very accelerated ageing machine, very accelerated. He looked old, he’d lost a lot of weight, his clothes were hanging off him. A tumour. At the end, that’s what did him. THE FINAL CHAPTER
Stettner didn’t like New York, so he went back to Europe, I didn’t see him for quite a few years. By that time, the other photographer and Sterner were finding out that maybe I was more of a liability than an asset. When you’re 19 years old, you’re a lot smarter than you should be. You know all the answers and nobody can tell you anything. But it was good working for Stettner, when he left I was already working in another big photo lab in the photo district, so, again, I would always run into Weegee. I’d already made 20-30,000 prints, I knew what I was doing and I was starting to get more upgraded jobs. The lab was doing an exhibition for Expo 67, in Montreal, and Weegee had a couple of prints in it. He needed the negatives, so he came up to the lab personally and we start working. There was the Coney Island negative, and then there was the kid looking down on the fire escape. I forgot the third one, but, of course, Weegee said, “Be careful of these negatives!” There was an area in the frame of the picture was going to be cropped for the exhibition, so he just took a regular pen and wrote his name right on it and I thought, God, that’s a little bit sacrilegious! He was going to do the same with the Coney Island negative, but he said, “Be careful of losing it, because I can’t crop anything off it.” Needless to say he was a little bit surprised that I was the guy making the exhibition prints. I finally left the Times Square area and started my own thing on 23rd Street – my own studio, my own darkroom. One of the problems on 23rd Street was that after a certain time, everything closed up, there was no place to eat, except in Times Square. I started running into Weegee and when I told him I’d started my own place, he said, “What’s the biggest size print you could make?” He made sure before we split that he had my phone number, he said there was something he wanted to do and he’d call me. Of course I didn’t hear from him and one day I was going into the camera store and one of the salesmen behind the counter says, According to the newspaper they’re burying our friend Weegee today. And they said The Times gave him a very dignified obituary and that was the end of Weegee.
Image credits in order of appearance:
1) [Manuel Jiminez lies wounded in the lap of Manuelda Hernandez, New York], July 29, 1941.
2) Weegee(Arthur Fellig)/International Center of Photography via Getty Images
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