Just More Wonderful Things

"Car accident" 1940 - Photograph by Weegee

WEEGEE from the Berinson Collection Photography

"He will take his camera and ride off in search of new evidence that his city, even in her most drunken and disorderly and pathetic moments, is beautiful."
- William McCleery in Naked City

Jazz in the Bowery, New York c. 1940’s
© Arthur Felig (Weegee)







"Ambulance Plunges Bringing Death to Two",
August 24, 1943; 33.8 x 26.8 cm.

"Murder at the Feast of San Gennaro",
September 22, 1939; 31 x 26.4 cm.

In 1940, Weegee got a job as special contributing photographer for PM Daily, a paper created in June 1940. Now, Weegee not only had his photographs signed, but from time to time he could add text to his pictures or even write whole stories. He got exhibitions and up to the publication of his first book in 1945, Nacked City, Weegee stayed with PM Daily. His photobook was a huge success. Among Weegees favourite subjects was New York's night life, with its bars and all types of entertainment. Weegee showed New York, in all its contrasts. Classes and culturs clashed in the nightly activities, such as in the third photograph on this page, The Critic (Nobember 22, 1943). Weegee cared about the ordinary people as much as about the high society and the stars. For a short time, Weegee experimented unsuccessfully with film in Hollywood in 1948. He returned to New York in 1952. In his later years, Weegee made also experiments with manipulated photographs. Among them is a series of disfigured heads of stars such as Marilyn Monroe or Jerry Lewis.






Girl jumped out of car, and was killed, on Park Avenue (c. 1940).

This picture shows a girl who leapt from a moving car on Park Avenue. Young says that she chose it in spite of the preponderance of Weegee shots of dead bodies. “This is a version we don’t know from other exhibitions,” she said. “This is a woman who’s fallen out of a cab and it’s poignant that, well, it’s a woman.” The victim’s body is enshrouded in a sheet, but her little black pocketbook remains in plain view.

Water Main Burst Uproots Madison Avenue (1938).


Circus Audience (c. 1943).

times square 1949

Crowd At Scene Of Accident
1940s, vintage silver print
13 x 10.

WEEGEE
"Fireman"
1939, vintage silver print
12 3/4 x 10 1/2.

WEEGEE
The Human Cop
ca. 1950s, silver print, ca. 1950s
10 3/8 x 13 9/16, "Credit Photo by Weegee the Famous" stamp, "Arthur Felig, 5 Center Market Place, New York City" stamp on print verso.

WEEGEE
"Bowery Follies"
ca. 1945, silver print, ca. 1940s
8 x 10 1/2, Notations in ink and in pencil, credit stamp and Arthur Feling stamp on verso.

WEEGEE
Fire Victim
ca. 1950s, silver print, ca. 1950s
10 1/2 x 13 7/16, "Weegee, 451West 47th Street, New York City, USA, TEL: 265-1955" stamp, "Please Credit Weegee from Photo-Representatives" stamp on print verso.


Tenement fire, Harlem, 1942

Mother and daughter looking up at the top floor, where another daughter and her baby are trapped.

"There had to be a good meaty story," Weegee once said, "to get the editors to buy the pictures. A truck crash with the driver trapped inside, his face a crisscross of blood, a tenement house fire with the screaming people being carried down the aerial ladder clutching their babies, dogs, cats, canaries, parrots, monkeys, and even snakes, a just shot gangster, lying in the gutter, well-dressed in his dark suit and pearl grey hat, hot off the griddle, with a priest, who seemed to appear from nowhere, giving him the last rites, just caught stick-up men, lady burglars, etc."

Summer, The Lower East Side, 1937.

Woman with Broken Umbrella.

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The Cannon Act, 1952.

King Weegee

Interview with collection founder and widow HERE.

US Hotel at 263 Bowery Street, New York, 1944




Rehearsal, Metropolitan Opera, 1943.















Outside the Metropolitan Opera House, 1943.




Night, Coney Island, 1940.

Ballerina Marina Franca in her peacock costume, April 18, 1941

Artists and Models Ball