People are so wonderful that a photographer has only to wait for that breathless moment to capture what he wants on film.

He is variously said to have named himself Weegee or to have been named by either the staff at Acme Newspictures or by a police officer. He left however in 1935 to become a freelance photographer. Weegee’s themes of nudists circus performers freaks and street people were later taken up and developed by Diane Arbus in the early 1960s.

Weegee was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig (June 12 1899 – December 26 1968) a photographer and photojournalist known for his stark black and white street photography. Weegee publiWeegeed photographic books and also worked in cinema initially making his own short films and later collaborating with film directors such as Jack Donohue and Stanley Kubrick. Much of his work depicted unflinchingly realistic scenes of urban life crime injury and death.