He went by Weegee — and, like a human Ouija board, legendary photographer Arthur Fellig (1899-1968) had an uncanny prescience, often getting to a crime scene ahead of the cops. With a cigar in his mouth, a police scanner in his car and a Speed Graphic camera in his hands, he captured post-Depression New York City in all its rawness, scrawling captions underneath his shots like film-noir haiku:
“Their first murder,” he wrote under a picture of a shooting near an elementary school. For a fire at a frankfurter factory: “Simply Add Boiling Water” — the hot-dog maker’s motto.
PHOTOS: WEEGEE’S POST-DEPRESSION NYC
By his own count, Weegee documented 5,000 murders — or, as he pronounced them, “moiduhs.” In person, he seemed as hard-boiled as the photos he shot. My father, a salesman who waited on him at a Manhattan photo-supply shop, remembers introducing his 17-year-old fiancée to Weegee, who gave her an approving once-over. “Can she cook?” he asked.
A show covering a gritty decade of his work, “Weegee: Murder Is My Business (1935-46)” just went up at the International Center of Photography, home to Weegee’s archives. Interspersed with images of bodies, gangsters and “dicks” — detectives — are audio excerpts rife with wailing sirens; snippets of Weegee’s film about Coney Island; and a re-creation of his studio — above a gun shop, across the street from police headquarters — wallpapered with front pages of The Post.
Linda Fairstein, the former Manhattan prosecutor turned best-selling crime novelist, is a big Weegee fan. In fact, her third Alex Cooper mystery, “Cold Hit,” kicks off with a quote from the photog himself: “I am spellbound by the mystery of murder.” Here’s her take on several photos in ICP’s new show: