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Arthur Fellig had a sharp eye for the unfairness of life.
An Austrian immigrant who grew up on the gritty streets of
New York City’s Lower East Side, Fellig became known as
Weegee—a phonetic take on Ouija—for his preternatural
ability to get the right photo. Often these were film-noirish
images of crime, tragedy and the denizens of nocturnal
New York. In 1943, Weegee turned his Speed Graphic
camera’s blinding flash on the social and economic inequal-
ities that lingered after the Great Depression. Not averse
to orchestrating a shot, he dispatched his assistant, Louie
Liotta, to a Bowery dive in search of an in ebriated woman.
He found a willing subject and took her to the Metropoli-
tan Opera House for its Diamond Jubilee celebration. Then
Liotta set her up near the entrance while Weegee watched
for the arrival of Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh and
Lady Decies, two wealthy women who regularly graced
society columns. When the tiara- and fur-bedecked social-
ites arrived for the opera, Weegee gave Liotta the signal to
spring the drunk woman. “It was like an explosion,” Liotta
recalled. “I thought I went blind from the three or four flash
exposures.” With that flash, Weegee captured the stark jux-
taposition of fabulous wealth and dire poverty, in a gotcha
style that anticipated the commercial appeal of paparazzi
decades later. The photo appeared in life under the head-
line “The Fashionable People,” and the piece let readers
know how the women’s “entry was viewed with distaste by
a spectator.” That The Critic was later revealed to have been
staged did little to dampen its influence.