of couples embracing at the movies, children in
theatres and at the circus, and lovers on the
beach at Coney Island at night became part of his
stock-in-trade. Another innovation included the
acquisition of a short wave police radio which,
when it wasn’t in his car, was stationed by his
bedside. Sanctioned by the New York Police
Department, Weegee would listen day and night
to the emergency calls being reported over the
radio by the NYPD and if any potential drama
piqued his interest Weegee would immediately
jump into his 1938 Chevy and make his way to
the scene. Needless to say, Weegee would usually
be the first photographer to arrive at any news-
worthy incident and would, in the process, often
beat the NYPD to the scene of the crime. For some
reason, and much to the chagrin of his fellow news
photographers, Weegee was the only press photo-
grapher permitted the privilege of a police radio. In
the 12 year period between 1936 and 1948, Weegee
covered over 5,000 murders, had worn out 10 plate
cameras and had gone through five cars. Ironi-
cally, given his speciality for shooting gruesome
and often bloody, murder scenes, Weegee was a
rather squeamish individual and hated the sight of
blood but, as he once remarked, was ‘‘spellbound
by the mystery of murder’’.
Weegee’s rise to celebrity status came about
shortly after the release of his first bookNaked
City, which was published in 1945. Naked City
covered the full gamut of Weegee’s work and, in
turn, quickly turned him into a media star.Naked
Citythe book spawned Mark Hellinger’s Universal
Pictures feature filmThe Naked City, and later a
television show. Shortly afterwards Weegee aban-
doned his crime photos and concentrated on a
more lucrative side of the photography business
shooting advertising assignments forVogue, Holi-
day, Life, Look, andFortune. He relocated from his
beloved New York to the west coast and lived in
Hollywood from 1947 to 1952, primarily working
as a film consultant but also playing a number of
cameo roles in films such asEvery Girl Should be
Married(1948),The Set Up(1949),The Yellow Cab
Man(1950), andJourney into Light(1951). His
most famous part, essentially playing himself, was
as a street photographer in Hellinger’sThe Naked
City (1948). Weegee’s last major Hollywood
assignment came in 1958 where he was employed
as a consultant on the set of Stanley Kubrick’sDr.
Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Bomb.
Whilst in Hollywood, he began a series of photo-
caricatures and photo-distortions of celebrities and
politicians using a variety of home made kaleido-
scopic lenses, mirrors, and other distorting appara-
tus. His subjects, or perhaps victims, included
Nikita Kruschev, John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Mon-
roe, Pablo Picasso, and Charles de Gaulle, amongst
others. In later years, Weegee continued with his
experimental work with manipulated and abstract
photography and also completed several short films
such asManhattan Moods (1946),Weegee’s New
York(1948),Cocktail Party(1950), andThe Idiot
Box(1965). He also shot a number of straight color
portraits of celebrities though this work is rarely
published and largely unknown. Though Weegee
returned to New York in 1952, he spent the major-
ity of his latter years working extensively in Europe
as both a freelance photographer and lecturer.
Weegee published several books during his life-
time. After the huge success ofNaked Cityin 1945,
he quickly followed up a year later withWeegee’s
People, which was greeted with great enthusiasm.
HoweverWeegee’s Peoplewas not nearly as suc-
cessful as Naked City since it lacked the first
book’s grimness and stark realism. ThoughWee-
gee’s Peoplewas the book he claimed he really
wanted to make, it was fast becoming apparent
that the dozen years ‘on the road’ as a news photo-
grapher were starting to take their toll on Wee-
gee—he no longer seemed to possess the hunger
and desire to shoot murders, accidents, fires, and
daily scenes of metropolitan disorder as he once
had. It would be another seven years before his
third publication,Naked Hollywood, hit the book-
stands in 1953.Naked Hollywoodwas met with a
degree of derision by both the critics and the pub-
lic alike since it contained many of his photo-car-
icatures and distortions, a style of photography the
world was obviously not ready for. Opinion on his
experimental work softened a little several years
later when Vogue published a number of his
abstract portraits in 1955 but Weegee was primar-
ily associated with his images of New York in the
1930s and 1940s.
Weegee would be the first to admit he was never a
great artist in the truest sense of the word. His
images have a certain naivete ́and innocence about
them but with his penchant for harsh light and
saturated black backgrounds, which he termed as
‘‘Rembrandt light,’’ Weegee’s style is instantly
recognizable—as is the subject matter. Usually
working without a preconceived idea of composi-
tion, the use of flash was a key element of Weegee’s
technique—the flash tended to frame the subject for
him and eliminated unwanted background detail.
This way of working produced images with a certain
immediacy and voyeurism about them, which is
arguably unique to Weegee.WEEGEE