The avant-garde Weegee… The Fluxus Fellig… Fellig the Zellig…

The Weird World of Weegee…

“Then, Mark Hellinger arrived from Hollywood and bought Naked City for the movies, I figured that this was amy chance to make a change, and signed a contract to work as a special consultant on the movie which was to be made on location in New York.
After the shooting was over, I closed my combination crime museum, photo studio, and love nest behind police headquarters. The police commissioner threw a party for me in his office. I shook hands with all the brass, the chiefs, the detectives… and was presented with a beautiful traveling bag. I had decided to leave New York. I was off to Hollywood. I thought that 1947 would be a year of new discovery for me.”
Weegee, Weegee by Weegee, p. 98

“I was really sitting in the driver’s seat. I had no competition, and nobody could get near me. I could do anything with my camera. Nothing was impossible to me, and I had found a ready market for my work.”
Weegee, Weegee by Weegee, p. 128

“Now history repeated itself. After a court battle, the New York movie theaters had been allowed to show nudist films. This being a lush market, everyone hopped on the wagon and began to shoot nudist films. As an authority on nudists, I was offered a job as a technical consultant on one of the first new nudies to be made.”
Weegee, Weegee by Weegee, p. 132

“That became my steady routine. In the morning, I would look for a photography job. I would stand in line and leave my name and address – I had now gotten myself a good Bowery address – and then arrive at the Automat at ten-thirty. With the dollar a day from the Automat job, I could live a carefree life… no responsibilities…
I liked the Bowery It was colorful. At night, I would go to the missions. After the services, I would join the rest of the men and march up to the front. I, too, had been redeemed and got my piece of bread, an apple, and salvation…”
Weegee, Weegee by Weegee, p. 21

“His greatness as a crime photographer grows out of three things: First, his willingness to live entirely for his work. Second, his ingenuity in carrying it out. Third, his very intelligent approach to a kind of material which other photographers treat in a routine manner.”

“Everyone seemed to have a camera. Soon there were so many photographers in the nudist camp that I put up a tent like the one Mathew Brady, the Civil War photographer, used. I even started a nudist camera club. This one was a great improvement over the camera clubs in the city.
I had plenty of models for my photographs. I had switched from the cold, dead bodies of gangsters to the nice, warm, sun-kissed bodies of the nudists. I was back to nature, a primitive with a camera, like Grandma Moses. I put a shingle over the tent: “THE WEEGEE SCHOOL OF PRIMITIVE PHOTOGRAPHY.”

“One of the reasons PM eventually folded was that it was ahead of the times. There were not quite as many eggheads around then as there are now. All of the lost souls used to read PM and swear by it. You could tell PM readers on sight. They looked like people from another planet waiting for somebody to take them to their leader… which of course, was PM.”
Weegee, Weegee by Weegee, p. 86

“Weegee makes friends readily. On a Chinatown assignment, he got this New Year’s lucky wish from a Chinese girl. He has a photo of her painting it pinned above his bed (see picture on next page). It is characteristic of him to have his picture taken this way. The cigar is standard equipment.”

“People are wonderful
Weegee loves his work, although he often dreams of retiring to Hawaii. (“I’m learning the Hawaiian language so as to be ready.”) He can’t understand why so many news photographers and police reporters are bored. He thinks people are wonderful, especially when they’re anti-social…”