Weegee is often cited as having been an influence on artists like Diane Arbus and Andy Warhol. He also influenced the world in how New York was viewed, because of his stark, black and white photos of the city.
Research:
- Smith, Roberta. “He Made Blood and Guts Familiar and Fabulous.” New York Times. Jan. 19, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/arts/design/weegee-at-international-center-of-photography-review.html
- Cotter, Holland. “'Unknown Weegee,' on Photographer Who Made the Night Noir.” New York Times. June 9, 2006.
- “Weegee.” Jewish Virtual Library. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/weegee
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Weegee". Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Jun. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Weegee
- Vermare, Pauline. “New York City, by Weegee the Famous.” Magnum Photos. Feb. 10, 2020. https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/society-arts-culture/new-york-city-by-weegee-the-famous/
- Mallon, Thomas. “Weegee the Famous, the Voyeur and Exhibitionist.” The New Yorker. May 21, 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/28/weegee-the-famous-the-voyeur-and-exhibitionist
- Weegee. “Weegee: The Autobiography (Annotated).” The Devault-Graves Agency. 2016.
- Bonanos, Christopher. “Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous.” Henry Holt and Company. 2018.
- Weegee. “Naked City.” Da Capo Press. 2002.
- Kilston, Lyra. “Weegee's Naked Hollywood.” Time. Nov. 28, 2011. https://time.com/3783214/weegees-naked-hollywood-at-moca/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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hello and welcome it upon cast I'm holly fry and I'm Tracy be wealth in this is gonna
not be related exactly to what we're talking about today but Tracy. Have you watched the documentary series, light and magic? Ok, what's amazing,
if you are a film dork and
do you love particularly the effects.
it is about the beginnings of industrial lighten magic and how all of those people really did.
In their very very disorganized and wonderful, creative ways, change the film industry
but that is not at all or time about today
we bring this up because in one
his interviews, richard edlund, who is one of the great forerunners of visual effects, at least in the modern era mentioned
himself as a kid running around with a camera and heat
However, these I quote, but he says you know like looking like. I was we g and I was like I forgot. I had we d all my life.
we gee. If that name is not familiar to. You is a fairly famous photographer and he
often cited as having been a really strong influence on the work of artists like dm airbus and Andy warhol, but on a bigger scheme
they'll, because he's pretty unique emit a lot
people saw his work without knowing who he was, and he was also getting attention from our world. He influenced
entire world really and how new york city was viewed by people, both people who lived in the city and people outside of it, because he really showed the city through his
and in a way that was very unvarnished and raw in stark black and white. That is who we are talking about today
so he's known as we do today, he was born usher filling in Zola chip which at the time was an austria, hungary. Now it's in ukraine that was on june, twelfth eighteen, ninety nine and when he was seven, his father bernard left for the united states, so usher and his mother and his three siblings stayed behind. They were there for the next four years, while bernard was working on all kinds of jobs, just trying to get settled
enough that he could send for the rest of the family and have them join him in the? U s at one point only on I, he sent his wife some stage money as a joke she initially bought. It was real
little just irritated by the yeah. I see pat herself up at the children and got ready for a move, and the bank also initially thought this was real and extremes to this currency.
They figured it out, though, before the family left for the u s and they had to cancel their move. Yeah I mean,
this is all based on. Of course, we jeez later recollections and he's known fur
embellishment and what not, but the way he describes the money give had some pretty key indicators that it was fake.
like a joker on the back and stuff, but like not legal.
Under its rights and
but like from a game. It was like to be used in a play. It was stage money but apparently good enough to fool a bank, but
they did eventually make it. In my tito six, when usher was still ten, the family was finally reunited at that point. Bernard had started a push cart of his own to make money because he had just struggled so much trying to get other people to give him an opportunity that actually paid a decent living wage. This was a lesson that I think you can see as we talk about we.
His life story. It clearly imprinted on his son usher sure. In later years we d wrote about coming to the united states and said that Ellis island seemed quote the most beautiful place in the
world, even as immigration officials inspected him and his family to make sure they weren't bringing disease into the country. But what really struck this ten year old boy was being given fresh fruit. While he was there, he had never. He said Siena banana or an orange before
and his name also changed at this point, at least on paper to arthur. He does not appear to have ever gone by that name. Then his family certainly didn't use it, but in the united states and in biographies you'll often see him listed as arthur phallic. The family moved soon. After that, from bernard's lower, he side tenement apartment on pit street to another at the corner of cherry and jackson, that was right next to a public school and his father had negotiated for the family to live there for free, because he and his wife were going to do all the buildings. Janitorial work they still struggled financially and they were still trying to learn. English
they were often called out as foreigners, but we described his family as having a pretty happy time during this point in his life yeah he's he, whether or not he is glossing over it or making it sound better than it was because he talks about going hungry. Sometimes he still talks about like I was pretty
for free, though, for me- and I really liked my childhood as he was,
learning: english usher. At the time,
engrossed in the stories of horatio Alger, who famously popularized the rags too rigid story in popular novels. The young fellow was convinced that he too could amass wealth if he just worked hard enough. Just
the boys in the book, so he started his own paper route just pretty enterprising, but the problem
was he could only get english language papers and most of his neighbors for immigrants to they could not read english. Well enough to want to buy a daily paper so that didn't pan out, I shall move on to reading detective novels and transit and his personal business to selling candy. He started out by purchasing the candy on credit
He somehow a talk to a store manager into allowing him to do this, and then he took the candy cart around to the sweat shops in the neighborhood after school. He would sell things like chocolate and chewing gum to the women who were working in these sweatshops during their breaks. The he reported making a hundred percent profit from this enterprise, and he gave all of his earnings to his parents to just keep the family fed and clothed with
a sure was fourteen. He quit school. He was a smart kid, any did pretty well, but he found it very boring compared to the rest of his life. He also was known to sleep in and he would kind of sleep until he heard the bell and then, since he lived right next door to the school, he would just kind of run overlooking completely dishevelled and start as ethnic. Although his principal really tried to get him to finish school because he was pretty smart, the family really needed more money than he was pulling in with his after school candy cart, and he had already become fascinated with photography. Before he had left school. A street photographer had taken his picture with a ten type camera. There's the cameras that captured images on sheets of metal that had a dark, lacquer coding this whole x
ingredients had really captivated him. He saved up enough money to order his own inexpensive, ten type camera, so he did manage to get an eight, a m to six p m job with a photography studio after a few months of working with this tintype. He definitely saw this as a way to
can you his education and learn from actual photographers? That's it.
We specialised in taking photographs of large objects that darted or door salesman would then use to make their pitches to potential buyers. It, of course, was not realistic to carry things like furniture chandelier and headstones around to make sales an usher worked as an assistant positioning, the pre.
Banks and the lights is directed and just trying to make everything look as good as possible for these photos. He also ran errands. He swept up after she
its heated, basically, all of the jobs that the lowest man on the latter would be assigned. The
other area of specialty for this photography. Business was taking photos of burned out buildings for insurance filings
uh sure was in charge of these shoots of blowing flash powder. He described blowing the powder through a tube onto alcohol soaked rags to ignite that powder and laid up the photograph. It's probably informed his later work doing a lot of night photography, but for all of this work, some of it pretty dangerous the flash powdered not always very safe to be around he made for fifty a week. So two years and his job, the camera operator left, an usher, was promoted, ensue that vacant position when his boss refused to pay him even half of what the previous camera operator had made usher quit on the spot, with my found rash for somebody who was helping to support his family, but usher had a whole other income stream because he was still selling candy on the side. Although his later work hours had
led to him transitioning to selling this candy at burlesque clubs instead of factories, and at this point usher was eighteen, so he bought himself of you camera and he started his first career as a freelancer
and he was really really pretty smart. You'll see it threw out his story, he's pretty savvy about business heath he kind of made his own customer base, so he would take photographs of children on the weekends writing a pony that he rented. Basically, he would just get neighbourhood kids and put him on his pony and take their picture
and then once he had developed the proofs, he would visit those kids parent, show them nos proofs and then be like
don't you want to order some prince? He lay
wrote that he believed that there was not a single east side home that didn't have one of his photos of a child on a pony sitting in it, but once boarding the pony outpaced his income, he had to give that enterprise up. This is the time of restlessness for us,
or he wanted to move out on his own. Although this was painful for his family, they were really close knit. It was upsetting to his mother. In particular. She caught him trying to leave with a suitcase and was so upset about it that he stayed a few weeks later. He sneaked away when the rest of the family was asleep. This was a bold and kind of foolhardy move. He didn't have money or a job or a place to stay, so he was sleeping in parks and missions. But
eventually started spending the night at pennsylvania station. He had a whole routine where every night he would check the pay phones for loose change, and then he would find a bench in the waiting room to sleep on and so police came to move people out in the morning. We do
in his autobiography that he would sit the officers a dime to let him sleep a little longer. He was
will we be able to find some work as a busboy in an automatic restroom. This is part time work. It was ten thirty, a m to two thirty p m, basically to cover the lunch hours, but it also included a light brown
this beforehand and then all the left over unpurchased items when lunch was over as well as being paid a dollar a day. This is a pretty good deal at the time he spent,
when you five cents a knight to rent a room, and he spent the extra available time. Looking for more photography jobs, he claimed that he eventually got himself fired from the automatic job on purpose
is, he felt like as long as he stayed there. He was doing well enough that he was not working as hard as he should to get a photography job.
We don't really know he got fired on purpose or if he got fired cause, he did soothing actually, but he blot devenant. We lost the job
and after that he took some day labour jobs, mostly in factories until he found a job taking passport photos. He was really good at this passport job because he managed to sell people who only needed to photos for their travel documents. Entire baggages of portraits for twenty five dollars each having had multiple passport photos, I'm also.
Impressed that they were photos. Anyone would want to have of them right. I dont want more of those his boss increased his salary from fifteen dollars a week to forty dollars than he described this period in his life is living it up. He was a young man making great money and he party the lot, but after three years of the job
the passport studio. Twenty four year old, a shirt took a fifty percent pay cuts to start working at acme news pictures in nineteen twenty three, when we
talk about we Jeez time at acme after we first pause for a sponsor break
They now we imagine, you ve, seen the theories on tiktok million
heard the rumours, your friends and loved ones by
many of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true
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surprisingly yes for more than a decade we here at stuff, they don't want. You know, have been seeking answers to these questions
times their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a format,
You can pre order stuff. They want you to know now the new book from
the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff. They don't want you to know
available for free order now stuff, he should read books, dot, com or wherever you find your favorite books.
Representation matters. If you're, looking for a space that highlights embraces an elevator latin next voices in Michael do their part. Gas network is for you
despite all of your lucky, nor needs with a variety of shows from lifestyles, lives with cheese and chill delivered in the english win withdrawals on life as a green go to no avail. Ass, like princes of south feet, Michael today, is home to. Let me know, creators listen to the map of good upon casts network on the ivory radio after wherever you get your part here,
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We mention that we ve started acme news pictures in nineteen twenty three march.
the year that Acme had started. It was a subsidiary of scripts howard, and this was essentially set up
to be an in house source of imagery for the scripts howard new syndicate, including the new york herald tribune.
uh sure was hired to work in the dark room, developing photos and making prince he made it known.
Then he wanted to be a photographer, but because he was unwilling to agree to the dress code of sure and tie. He only gus
and out on night jobs, kind of in emergency situations,
This actually aligned pretty nicely, though, with ushers desires, he loved taking photos of new york's night happenings
of his work on those early assignments was taking pictures of fires. He was
really glad to be shooting more dynamic moments instead of things like passport photos and he writing
is that working in the dark room had actually made him think about how his photos would develop. So we had a straw.
I for catching moments that if he had not been doing that job, he was
working in the newspaper business and a really unique time. He was seeing all of the events of the time as they developed under his hands, but he also saw the transition from flash powder to flash bulbs when he saw the shifting role of news photographer as subjects like president's became important to capture, keep in mind. It was only in the late night team teams that
papers started running photographs with stories instead of illustrations. So it was really the start of the field of better journalism. We do with later right that he and photography were growing up at the same
I'm he also saw during this work that speed. It was vital
ever outlets got their negatives to the telephone companies. Distribution offices first ensured that their credit was the one that the entire country would seem. So while it acme
a sure came up with some fairly ingenious and slightly sneaky ways to get ahead of the competition for exam.
Oh, he would rent an ambulance to go out on a job, then have it parked in waiting while the shots were being taken and then, when he said
photographing and he jumped back in the vehicle. The sirens were turned on and they could zip downtown while
developed the photos in the back of the ambulance. He knew it.
got caught doing this. He was gonna get in trouble, so he would change it up, sometimes with things like taxis and trains and always doing
mobile developing, which is pretty impressive on one shoot. He said that he law
himself in an empty subway trains, motor man's booth and develop the glass plate negative in layer before he got to stop. Also unbeknownst to his bosses usher moved into the dark room at Acme. I get the makings of a bed in his locker. He would pull them out at night after everybody laughed, he kicked out of cans on the engraver stove and you love, but he did not have any neighbours after a lifetime of living in cramped rental spaces, he was actually pretty happy. With this whole lorraine
meant the outer himself to his bosses. When the united press ticker machine went off at four a m on September third, nineteen, twenty five that was alerted
news outlets to the crash of the navy. Dirigible, the. U s, s shut in doha, that crashed into higher. He decided the story was more important than his secret about living there in the dark room, so we called it
authors. So this ended his sleeping arrangements, but Acme got photos from the crash.
before anybody else, since all of the other news photographers got the message when they arrived at work in the morning out.
Earth after usher in his bosses.
had already ensured that a camera man in ohio could get the shot and then send it. The train porter to new york.
The other offshoot of having his squatting in the office suddenly out in the open was it is
This is actually realized. He was pretty happy to take photography jobs at all hours. He was clearly a nato also when news broke outside of the usual nine. If I worked day it just
it had to be assured that they called instead of one of the regular staff photographers, he had an ear to the ground approach to getting shots of crime scenes and he moved really fast to get to the sites and take the pictures- and that's been said as something that led to that widely known moniker of weegee. It's a phonetic version of the commonly mispronounced word, ouija and cop started, calling usher that because it seemed like he was psychic he would show up at crime scenes
even before the police got there on occasion, but according to wheedling himself, it was actually given to him by young women around the office
either way this name stuck and he liked it and he started using it
twelve years at Acme, we d was starting to feel restless and, like his data day, had actually grown kind of stale. He
ready to do more photography of the things he chose rather than waiting and hoping for assignments, while he was developing the work of other photographers, so in nineteen thirty five he gave two weeks notice and once again returned to his freelance instincts because of his ears with acme weeds. He knew the police around manhattan so as a freely on thirty started hanging out a police headquarters. They didn't have pressed credentials, but cops had seemed so much of him that they assumed that he did. He would actually pull the teletyped slips off of the machines and then hand them over to police reporters, and so when they catch story he would just financial or ride along with them. He later
This time quote, crime was my auster and I liked it my post graduate course in life and photography. She also somehow, during this time, head finagle to getting the key to the dark room at the new york post, so he would develop his
prince there, and then he would give that outlet first dibs on the shots that he had and then he
make the rounds at other papers to sell his photos. He also
about this time why he felt his work was taking off and why those often grisly images of people who had been shot or were in car accidents or we're trying to escape tenement fires were so appealing to readers. He wrote quote: it was during the depression, and people could forget their own troubles by reading about others and we d with smart about hustling in instances where there were photos with two people like a cop in the man he had just arrested, we do would cut the photo in half and sell each half as a separate image that would double his income. He also knew some papers wanted, not just crime photos, but also things like cute animal shots, so he caught deals with our local fire stations to call him if any of their dogs ever had any litters. He would stage cute pictures of the mother and babies. Me was basically always working as many angles ass. He could to sell as many photos as he could.
Unsurprisingly, he thought a lot of them to tabloids whose readers weave you described as needing quote their daily bloodbath and sex potion to go with their breakfast and though he had left Acme because he had got on board there. He still had a really good relationship with them. He left on good terms any specifically had a good relationship with the
but oh editor, there he lay
He said that he always saved the best photographs for acme and that he knew he would always make a sale there. He lay
iter. Lamented, though, that he had been so good at providing such a steady stream of crime scene voters, editors got choosy, readers were less and less enthralled. Just as his cachet was dwindling, he managed to get photos of a couple of teenagers gladys midnight and her boyfriend who had committed a grisly murder through his connections and a friends he had been the only photographer allowed to meet and take photos of a couple. He sold these two every paper in town after that, his name on a photo by line had enough cloud that photo editors were no longer jaded with his crime scene, shots met them point. You started stamping his photo prince with the imprint by
We d, the famous life magazine, even ran a story about we d and his work and his close ties to police headquarters. Yet those photographs are super duper, weird that he got of those teenagers gladys and her boyfriend killed gladys, his mother in a very gruesome way, but the photos that he took them look like engagement, photos, it's really creepy and weird, that's very good, be it is, but
so why people all wanted to buy them, and that is how three years into his post acme freelance career, we d
famous at this point, got permission to. Instead
All a police, radio right in his own car. This meant
he was more or less guaranteed to always be the first photographer on site for any emergency murder, rescue fire or accident. He was eight
to get shot before crowds had even formed adding to the
two missy of his lenses point of view. He turned his car, which was a nineteen thirty, eight shabby coop into a mobile photo studio. He carried camera equipment, protective gear, food, extra clothes and even disguises in the trunk.
Nineteen forty, he started working regularly with the magazine p a magazine. This was on a salary. That relationship lasted four and a half years, and during that time he got paid every week whether he brought in images or not. He was also given the freedom to make his own assignments. He worked with the daily news, the herald tribune, the sun and, as we mention the post, the decade of the nineteen forties was the apex of his career. In addition to those papers all pretty regularly purchase
photographs. The new york photo league had also taken notice of wages, work and in nineteen, forty one, the organization staged and exhibit of that work two years later his photos
to go on exhibit at the museum of modern art
you have. Our relationship with Pierre magazine only ended because the magazine went bankrupt not because he had any following our them quite like them, not all
all of which these photographs, we should say, were of crimes and the people involved in them. He also too
otis amounts of very clear social commentary. One of his most famous photographs during this time was called the critic and was taken in nineteen. Forty
three. It features to society, women in fancy dress with white fur capes, and they have these sort of benign pleasant expressions.
in their walking by another woman who is dressed much more humbly. That third woman is in profile, she's, slumping posture and she appears to be sneering at the other two women judgment away
If we're going to talk about this image some more in a minute, but it was widely praised as a social commentary illustrating the values of the working class versus the wealthy. He also took
more joyous photos. He took a photo in nineteen forty one called afternoon, crowded, coney island. This have literally thousands of people and their all crowded onto the beach. From his vantage point above them, he yelled and got their attention, and when a lot of people turned to face him, we
he snapped the picture. He also take pictures in places like movie theater, using infrared film, to capture the goings on of the crowd. Even in the dark. He took a lot of photographs that a place called Sammy's bowery follies, which was a club full of performers and clientele that one might describe as being from the fringes of society at the time they were mixing with celebrities who dropped in for a show or a drink drink. He captured the culture and music scene of harlem and a number of gorgeous photographs photographs. Those are some of my favorite pictures from him because, because just just always super beautiful, beautiful, there's one really really great when where he took a photo of a family as they were leaving church on easter
sunday when he stopped to talk to them. The man had said: oh, I actually sell clothes and he was like well that's why you look so sharp and can I take your picture and it's this great picture they're all smiling. They all look beautiful, but the great part is there's this kid who is part of the family and he's dress, super sharp, but he's kind of leaning around from behind
I presume, is his dad and he has a great smile on his face and his sisters, lake spectacular capture of a moment,
we're gonna talk about. We jeez foray into the book world
we first hear from the sponsors who keeps stuff you missed in history class, going
So by now we imagine, you ve, seen the theories on tiktok, maybe
heard, the rumours, your friends and loved ones by
any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true
The answer is surprisingly
Surprisingly, yes, for more than a decade we hear at stuff, they don't want. You know, have been seeking answers to these questions,
sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a format
you can pre order stuff. They don't want you to know now. The new book from
Thus, the creators of the park, gaston video series, you can turn back now or read the stuff. They don't want you to know.
available for free order. Now it stuffy should read books, dot, com or wherever you find your favorite books, representation matters. If you're looking for a space that highlights embraces an elevator latin next voices in Michael do their part. Gas network is for you
despite all of your lucky, nor needs with a variety of shows from lifestyles, ives with cheese and chill living, and indeed we would draw mose on life is agreeable to no avail ass, like princes of south feet, Michael today's home, to let me know, creators listen to them. I put a pot cast network on the ivory radio after wherever you get your pocket.
and subscribe to our you to channel for more imagine living in a world where every day is pride except it's inclusive. Anger. Create entities include the celebration of both your race answer,
girl that sounds like a dream. A rainbows and chocolate cover brussels will maybe
Here is the reality, the black that vampa just a particle,
with of authority are celebrated, every
between girl, listen to the black that podcast
on the eye heart radioactive apple, podcast or wherever you get your projects
in nineteen.
forty five, we d published his first book. Titled naked city anyhow
he had a pretty hard time finding a publisher who would take his collection of raw greedy photos. Most publisher
also wanted more kitty and predictable images of the city, which were the kind
the photos that we simply did not take. He had murders and oddball street character,
said buildings on fire, and it was all in black and white.
For example, one of the images was a group of kids in a woman all with a very wide range of expressions on their faces. You would have
no idea what they were experiencing if it did not have the title, their first murder, the caption that he had written for it read a woman relative, cried but neighbourhood
yet in kids enjoyed the show when a small time racketeer was shot and killed, and the image that he peered this with was a photograph of the murder victim on the ground. Finally, he wrote quote the miracle happens. The book was published. He had his book party, not at a swing hotel, but it Sammy's naked city was a huge success and it opens the door for him to work for a time at vogue, and it also made it a lot easier for him to publish the second book, which was we
these people and that came out in nineteen forty six yeah, he was ass, you do have a bad relationship, a vote, but that was not a good parents.
like a grey fit, really no heat
the story and whose autobiography about how his editor was late. You have to buy a text
I know cause I keep finding out that you weren't led him to events cause. You didn't look nice enough and I actually need you to get into events to take pictures of its he. He got like a secondhand tuxedo and you know did a wore it all the time cause he couldn't afford. Another
he said in nineteen forty seven, we d move to hollywood. Emmy stay there for five years. During the time he worked. Isn't it?
aye, sir I'm films, he occasionally ended up appearing in bit parts one of
most enduring legacies of this time. There is the work he did creating promotional photographs from the set of doktor strange love. If you are a movie buff and you ve seen photographs of the pie,
ending of doktor strangelove. That has never been seen because cuba changed his mind.
And destroyed the negative, those
photos were shot by we d and his picture.
but the only proof that that abandoned, ending ever existed in nineteen. Fifty two he returned to new york. He published a book of photographs from his time in California, the following here that was called naked hollywood
The images in this book examined celebrity in the culture surrounding it, as well as ideas of beauty. One series of photo shows a young woman in a crowd: first smiling
and then looking worried and then in the third and fourth shots breaking down into tears, it's easy to think the photographer had managed to be there when she got terrible news. But the caption reads quote an american tragedy: no autograph.
We d also started to play with images of beauty in ways that often made them look grotesque or absurd, and he called these elastic photos.
On one of them. He manipulated a photograph of film star, Virginia may and he made her look really freakish by printing. Her in
distorted and mirrored way he basically like cut her off about one third
the way into her image and then mirrored that said, the middle was cut out. Many had like this strange double image of her
eight or appear to have two faces and no arms,
interesting. It's weird. He also took a closer.
photo Marilyn monroe, any squash sections of the image, so she who everyone agreed with spectacularly beautiful came to
almost like a monster or a funhouse version of herself, but the absurd
Crudity of hollywood was something that we d also played with by using himself as the subject of the pictures in one image he took offence.
Of several shelves full of wax heads, celebrities and his own,
head is among them
it definitely always seem to love being part of the spectacle, and a lot of biographers and historians have written pretty extensively about his exhibition.
side as juxtaposed with his observer photographer sign back in new york, he continued to experiment with his elastic photography, but it just wasn't all that popular. Some of the photos from this period of his life are quite charming, though one time,
well. The boy meets girl from mars features a man and a woman in a passionate embrace, but both of them are wearing, futuristic clothes and helmets throughout the nineteen fifties that sort of seemed like he was
trying to find a new voice in his work. He went to Europe. He came back to the states. He took sexy photos of betty page on a new jersey farm. He played with image manipulation, but he never found a second wave of
onyx style like those earlier greedy new york images he had created. He asked
made a nudist film of himself strikes most people as little odd, the stream subtle plot history.
For a heap he dabbled in nudism, and that film is its very it's a very strange. Our house
When we d wrote his autobiography in nineteen sixty one, he dedicated it to the tool that has made his career. Writing quote to my modern latins lamp, my camera and you
sense of the man immediately from the opening paragraph of the book, which reads quote my typewriter is broken,
I own no dictionary, and I never claimed I could spell and if shakespeare balls
industrial ski could do it the hard way in long hand. So can I he can
he's on to say that he doesn't need a ghost trader. Any has no creative inhibitions, and that quote.
Maybe abnormal to you is normal to me. If I had to live my life
over again. I would do it all the same way. Only more so it's a very fun reed, although there is a lot of talk about his womanizing, an some pretty detailed discussion of the sex workers of new york at the time, which comes along with a significant amount of massage any. He talks, for example, about saturday being the day of the
week that he went to various addresses that were shared among the men that he knew as being the addresses of sex workers has talk about this, isn't violent or scary, but its detached and dehumanized and most historians encourage taking a lot of this autobiography
with a grain of salt. He is, as promised, pretty uninhibited in telling his story
I don't make himself out as a hero or anything, but he is very confident to the edge of cockiness about his work and he does tend to centre himself in every possible way he's open about scenes that got to him. For example, he does
I'm getting to scenes where people jumped to their deaths and driving right by, rather than stopping, to take the picture, choosing not
now because he knew he couldn't handle it and then going home for the night is also
open about a scene where he photographed a woman and her adult daughter, as they found out that two of her younger children had burned to death and that he cried when he took the photo. Writing quote the image of two crying women was too hot me for the rest of my life. I was raised in a tenements and I just couldn't escape them. It didn't bother him to take pictures of murdered gangsters, but family tragedies really upset him. He also mentioned that, after being really shaken by photographing, so many car crashes of vehicles that had crashed onto the street under the west side highway after losing control, he launched his own campaign to photographed the lack of safety at that site and to sell those two newspapers to run as a story about the problem.
This gap, a city to finally add reflective markers to the abutments in the road and of this effort. He wrote quote this work. I consider my memorial. What he doesn't include in that autobiography is any mention of his wife, wilma wilcox, whom he had married a number of years before
writing it. Whether she was chagrin to have been left out. We do not know he also it.
King about the many many women with which he claimed to have been intimate, never mentions in earlier marriage that didn't last very long. He seems, of course
to have been uninhibited talking about himself only in some ways apparently well,
and we ve had known each other since the nineteen forty. She was a social worker and quaker, and we d
come to depend on her after he was diagnosed with diabetes in the late nineteenth fifty's
We d died on December twenty six nineteen sixty eight in new york, city and wilma was kind of the steward of his photograph collection. After that part of the unique appeal of windy both when he was working and now is how much as voters made the viewer feel like they were part of the scene. The way his work is composed often makes you feel, like you're standing right in the middle of the action as it's going on during his
rear. This gave his images appeal for the press. It made every story more real for the readers and then today it offers a unique documentary view of the new york that he lived and worked in, but there have always been questions about whether these were all caught
in the moment- and there have been instances where he confessed- that some of his shots were staged at least partially, for example, his photo the critic that we talked
earlier, which was so acclaimed as a commentary on class was actually somewhat contrived
The woman in the photo looking at the two wealthy social with disdain, was a heavy drinker who was known around the bowery, and we d confessed in a book written several years after the photo was taken,
that he had had his assistant at the time llewelyn oda by her drinks until she was very intoxicated and then they essentially propped her up on the street outside the met. As limousines were pulling up to drop
opera goers. She is probably not looking at them with any kind of scorn
is very, very drunk and trying to fix her eye on something. Even with those kinds of manipulations. Weedy is recognised as an exceptional figure in photographic art he was famous and both popular publishing.
and art circles in his lifetime. He figured out a way to exist as an artist on his own terms in part, because he had basically gotten in on the ground floor of better journalism, and he remains fascinating today, as crime scene photos are still jarring and evocative an intriguing and his other work continues to be examined and interpreted as photography, rebuffs and biographers. Try to canada tease out where the balance was between usher felling and we d. I highly encourage looking at lots of his work
because it's very interesting because it some of it is obviously graphic yeah there's so much of it. I mine and I dont over the entire collection of his art work. But if you just google, we d there's a whole website, that's collected right there.
You have a library card. I almost guarantee, or local library has a book with photographs by they are everywhere. I am jumping tone so significantly to our listener, males in this,
it's from our listener, Kate, who writes hi. Ladies I'm a long time listener who saves your podcast episodes to binge? Listen on my many drives from Kansas to minnesota and back again this has been a major sanity saver. As my dog twyla photos attached is not the most talkative. Travel can be
in twilight is cute. Yesterday toward the end of my third round trip to minnesota this summer, I reached the episode on doktor Lucy hobbs taylor. I was delightfully surprise to find that her life's journeying took her to the exact place I was travelling to and have called home for four years Lawrence Kansas, I drove by her vermont street residence photos also attached on my way to work this morning. There's a lovely private orchard between her former home, and would you believe it a dental practice called the dentists and lawrence. There are many historical buildings in the city of lawrence, including a few of the university of Kansas campus, but I didn't know until today the doktor hobbs tailors house was one of them. Thank you for teaching me something new about my own community. In addition to all the other incredible things, you're pike s covers, history really is all around us.
That seems so fun to me to like discover that a major prominent person in history who again we all need dental work at some point in time and you know, helped shape a field that is so vital to everybody's health and, well being so, I love it. I love it. Thank you so much kate for writing us this letter. I hope that you had a lot of fun exploring and discovering places. I had read that there was an orchard near her house and I have never gotten to see a good picture of it to so it was exciting. If you would like to write to us, you can do so at history. Podcast at I heart radio dot com. You can also find us on social media as missed in history and if you have not subscribed yet
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Transcript generated on 2022-08-19.