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Exhibition Information

Weegee
American, 1899–1968
Frank Pape, Arrested for Homicide, 1944
gelatin silver print, probably 1960s
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Patrons’ Permanent Fund

Born Usher Fellig, Weegee emigrated from Austria to New York in 1910, moving with his family to a cold-water tenement in Manhattan's Lower East Side. After dropping out of school at fourteen and working at a variety of jobs, he was hired as a darkroom technician for Acme Newspictures (later United Press International Photos), and began covering the nightly fires when the regular photographers were off duty. After 1935, he worked as a freelance photographer covering the murders, fires, and accidents in the city, which he sold to the tabloids and photographic agencies. A master of flash, Weegee frequently caught his subjects off guard, recording their momentary expressions of pain, shock, or terror with a stark immediacy.

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