Just went to the Getty Museum in LA to check out the exhibition of photographs by Weegee. The exhibition was good, showing a great variety of his photography subjects.
Seeing his photography in person, rather than in print, was awesome. The shots he got primarily with his trusty Speed-Graphic camera were a joy to behold. The compositions, the tonal-ranges, the expressions on the subjects were just incredible. He truly was a master of his craft.
For those of you uninitiated with Weegee, he was primarily a Crime-scene photographer, but saying that severely limits the perception of what he truly was.
Weegee (Born Arthur Fellig in Austria in 1899) was a photographer of Human-emotions.
His composition, lighting, and, sometimes, manipulating of the scene, brought out so much emotion that you could hardly believe all of it could fit in one picture.
Early in his career he worked for Acme Newspictures (which later became United Press International-UPI). This is where he learned and honed a lot of the skills he later used. After leaving Acme, Weegee made his way to New York (circa 1935), and started shooting criminals and crime-scenes, and would run around in the early-morning hours selling his photos to the picture agencies for placement in the newspapers.
Crimes, fires, brothel-raids, nightclub raids, were all part of his photographic repertoire. He often employed multiple flashbulbs (no i-TTL here!) in his late-night photography, or the newly developed infrared-film, in which he didn’t need to use his flash. He couldn’t actually see the lovers (or other people in the dark) that he was shooting, but would run home and develop the film to see what he’d actually shot. To see some of these “blind” photos in person, gave you no doubt that WeeGee knew what he was doing.
Sadly, the show at the Getty closes on Jan 22, 2006, but if you ever get a chance to view his photos in person (and aren’t too squeamish) you’ll be truly in awe of a Master Photographer!