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| Under the Third Avenue Elevated, 1938 ‘Weegee’ was born Usher Fellig on 12 June 1899 in the town of Lemburg (now in Ukraine). He first worked as a photographer aged 14, three years after his family emigrated to the United States Photo: Weegee/International Center of Photography |
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| Arrests made during a gambling raid in lower Manhattan’s Liberty Street, October 1942 Self-taught, Weegee held many photography-related jobs before gaining regular employment at a photography studio in lower Manhattan in 1918. This job led him to others at a variety of newspapers until, in 1935, he became a freelance news photographer Photo: Weegee/International Center of Photography |
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| The Ham n Egg on Broadway, 1953/4 Photo: Weegee/International Center of Photography |
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| ‘Simply Add Boiling Water’: a fire in the Ameko building near Brooklyn Bridge, December 1943 Weegee based his photographic work around police headquarters, and in 1938 obtained permission to install a police radio in his car. This allowed him to take the first and most sensational photographs of news events and offer them for sale to publications such as the Herald-Tribune, Daily News and the Post Photo: Weegee/International Center of Photography |
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| Car and truck collision in Brooklyn’s Stuyvesant Avenue, 1947 Photo: Weegee/International Center of Photography |
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| Water main burst uproots Madison Avenue, May 1945 Photo: Weegee/International Center of Photography |
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| Act of Love at the Astor Theatre, Times Square, 1954 During the 1940s, Weegee’s photographs appeared outside the mainstream press. New York’s Photo League held an exhibition of his work in 1941, and the Museum of Modern Art began collecting his work and exhibited it in 1943. Weegee published his photographs in several books, including Naked City (1945), Weegee’s People (1946), and Naked Hollywood (1953) Photo: Weegee/International Center of Photography |
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| Caffé Bella Napoli, Mulberry Street, July 1944 Weegee’s career is unusual in that he was both successful in the popular media and respected by the fine-art community during his lifetime. His photographs’ ability to navigate between these two realms comes from the strong emotional connection forged between the viewer and the characters in his photographs Photo: Weegee/International Center of Photography |
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| ‘Time Is Short’ in Broome Street, Little Italy, 1942 After moving to Hollywood in 1947, Weegee devoted most of his energy to making 16mm films and photographs for his “ Distortions” series, a project that resulted in experimental portraits of celebrities and political figures. He returned to New York in 1952 and lectured and wrote about photography until his death on 27 December 1968 The International Center of Photography’s retrospective exhibition in 1998 attested to Weegee’s continued popularity Photo: Weegee/International Center of Photography |
Source: The best of Weegee's New York street photography – in pictures
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