Long before Law & Order trailers littered the streets of New York City, and NYPD Blue made David Caruso famous, New Yorkers got their fill of sordid crime drama from the pages of daily newspapers. No one captured the gore and grit of the city like newspaper photographer Arthur Fellig, or Weegee, as he became known. The International Center for Photography (ICP) has recently opened "Weegee: Murder is My Business," a new exhibition showing 120 of Weegee's photographs from 1935 -1946, when the photographer practically had a monopoly on images of the murder and mayhem of post-Prohibition New York City. Besides creating an appropriate setting from which to view the drama which Weegee strove to capture in his images, the ICP gives us insight into the brand-conscious psyche of the man himself. We’re left with a narrative of the city through the lens of an unapologetic, yet talented, self-promoter. Weegee understood that the darkest of subject matters would ultimately enliven his viewers if he could just draw them far enough inside the human drama of the act.

Weegee, Installation view of "Weegee: Murder Is My Business" at the Photo League, New York, 1941.
© Weegee/International Center of Photography.

The ICP has near hegemony of Weegee's work after it was bequeathed 16,000 photographs and 7,000 negatives in 1993 by Wilma Wilcox, the longtime companion of the photographer. "Weegee: Murder is My Business” acutely illustrates the backdrop of New York City on the heels of the Great Depression; a world saturated with former bootleggers and mafia men carving the city as their own. The setting was a grim and rough metropolis, where murder, arson and other sordid affairs went bump in the night. With plot lines that now seem lifted straight out of our favorite film noir films, the police reports that Weegee chased were riddled with bullets, brutal murders, and wise guys.

Weegee, Weegee covering the morning police line-up at police headquarters, New York, ca. 1939.
© Weegee/International Center of Photography.

Descending to the ground floor of the ICP, guests are greeted with a blown-up photograph of Weegee sitting on his own fire escape, camera in hand, cigar in mouth above a gun advertisement for Frank Lava Gunsmith Revolvers. This is the apartment where Weegee would listen to the incidents of crime come through on a police radio, across the street from the station. This home is the perfect place for the self-named "official photographer of Murder, Inc": few frills and all of his needed tools at hand. The ICP recreates the apartment down to the skinny-mattress, the typewriter, and newspaper articles that show Weegee's work up on the walls. This is one of the detailed touches which pull the viewer into the world of the photographer. We see hints of Weegee’s own brand building; his careful craft of self-aggrandizing.

Weegee claimed that murders were the easiest to photograph because the subjects never moved. And sure enough, he easily captures the finality of each act - choosing to work mostly at night with a flash, Weegee creates stark images of the city's underworld as it crept out into the open. However, as the ICP aptly points out in including Weegee's photographs alongside those of other journalists and detectives on the scene, Weegee's eye was busy taking in images that might not have made it into a typical police report. While other photographers focused on the twisted body of a victim, Weegee includes the witnesses on a nearby rooftop who look down to investigate the commotion.

Weegee, Their first murder, October 8, 1941.
© Weegee/International Center of Photography.

In one famous shot poignantly titled Their First Murder, the focus of the photograph is not at all on the dead, rather Weegee's frame is filled with school children. We see necks craning and pushing. A boy at the front of the photo locks eyes with the camera. The shot is filled with movement and emotion, and creates an interesting juxtoposition to the lifeless bloody body left at the scene of the crime. We see the victim's aunt in the middle of the photo, real anguish on her face, while a little girl in front of her strains herself for what seems like a better angle. Her face reveals a mixture of curiosity and excitement and her eyes draw us into the photo. A young blonde boy on the left looks almost gleeful - is it because he has witnessed a brutal event, or because he recognizes that he has captured the interest of the photographer? Again we see what sets Weegee apart from the other news photographers of the time. He makes human drama his focal point. A brutal photograph of a dead body, suddenly becomes more enticing because of the way that the living are responding. Gazing at Their First Murder I was immediately reminded of the spectator sport that such atrocity sometimes inspires. I, as the viewer, want to believe that being witness to such violence would repulse the children, that they would want to turn away - but the reality is much more disturbing than this; the excitement on the faces is palpable. The viewer is instantly reminded of the voyeuristic nature of witnessing a crime.  

Weegee, Balcony seats at a murder, November 16, 1939.
© Weegee/International Center of Photography.

Another photo that captured my attention is Balcony Seats at a Murder. A recent victim is sprawled on the doorstep of a coffee shop in the foreground of the photo. Above him, a crowd gathers on the balconies and fire-escapes of an adjacent tenement.  The photo is taken from a distance; again the attention is less on the lifeless body, than on the on-lookers and the irony of the spectacle.
    
The exhibit doesn’t just end at Weegee’s photographs of murder. To give us context and proof of his talent, we are also treated to portraits and compositions of witnesses, police officers, children playing at fire hydrants, and revelers at Brooklyn’s Coney Island. One famous photo, Tenement Penthouse in Manhattan, is of children sleeping on a Lower East Side fire-escape to avoid the stifling heat of indoors. In one of the publications of the photo Weegee inscribes, “In summer I always keep an eye out for hot weather pictures. I got this one on the East Side - looking down on the fire escape. There were more children, but I couldn't get them all in. I used to sleep like this summers myself when I was a kid.” It is no wonder that this is the part of town Weegee was most fascinated with when not chasing crime scenes. He himself was the son of Austrian Jews, and immigrated with his family to America where they settled in the Lower East Side when he was still a child. In a sense Weegee photographed the life that he had always known.

Weegee, Weegee inspecting trunk that contained body of William Hessler, who had been stabbed to death, Brooklyn, August 5, 1936.
© Weegee/International Center of Photography.

A revealing aspect of the exhibit is the amount of self-portraits and the very self-conscious pose Weegee takes in them. We see photo after photo of Weegee - fedora on his head, cigar in his mouth, a particular swagger in his stance. This is a man who was proud of his work, and understood the importance of brand crafting in the pursuit of career building. Weegee photographed himself constantly. Weegee with a corpse stuffed in a trunk; Weegee investigating a crime scene; Weegee with a diffused bomb; Weegee lying on his bed, two pairs of boots stacked next to a table over-run with materials to get the perfect shot. It is interesting to note that the ICP archives contain 1,500 self-portraits of Weegee. His fame though, was not unfounded. “He drove to a crime site; took pictures; developed the film, using the trunk as a darkroom; and delivered the prints.” (The New York Times) A telling anecdote that the ICP highlights is Weegee’s first exhibition of prints at the Photo League. His photographs, tacked to what looks like poster-board, are organized under headings that read “Murder” and “More Murders.” The details of blood were actually colored in by the photographer with red nail-polish to emphasize the gruesome subject matter (but becomes more theatrical and campy than anything else). A label tells us that Weegee signed his own comment book for the show to praise himself under the signature of “anonymous.” A true New York man, Weegee was the ultimate hustler.

The exhibit captures the spirit of Weegee, and the curator does an excellent job in giving us context and creating an environment where we can access the work. I got lost in the era associated with the photographs. Though a guest at the ICP will be treated to one photograph after another of lifeless corpses and bloody crime scenes, the real human interest lies in the background of each shot. Weegee’s stories are not just about the facts that filled the police reports, but about the people who witnessed the action. Prior to this exhibition I did not know that Diane Arbus credited Weegee as inspiration but it was made increasingly obviously as I made my way through the exhibit. Instead of shying away from the mundane, Weegee highlights it and makes it sexy. He teases out the soul of New York’s regular citizens, and gives us pause to consider the neighbors that surround us.