Weegee Speaks!

"It's like a modern Aladdin's lamp. You rub it--in this case, the camera-- you push the button and it gives you the things you want"

Today's mp3s come courtesy of my friend Laura Levine, fellow photographer, artist, and proprietor of Homer & Langley's Mystery Spot Antiques. Recently, Laura purchased a collection of 15,000 LPs to sell at the shop, and among them was this very rare and curious gem, Famous Photographers Tell How. Below you can hear Weegee talk about picture-making. It's interesting to hear his voice, which is one of those accents you don't hear so much in New York anymore: part Austro-Hungarian immigrant by way of the Lower East Side and part Elmer Fudd. Peter Sellers based his accent in Dr. Strangelove on Weegee's voice after Weegee visited Kubrick's set. One of my favorite things in Weegee's classic 1945 book, Naked City is the last chapter called "Camera Tips" where he gives away some of his tricks of the trade. Dated or not, I learned a tremendous amount when I first read it, about picture taking, and about Weegee.



Download:

"Weegee" mp3
by Weegee, 1958.
from Famous Photographers Tell How
out of print



"Now the easiest kind of a job was a murder, because the stiff would be laying on the ground. He couldn't get up and walk away and get tempermental and he would be good for at least two hours."

Arthur Fellig adopted the name Weegee or "Weegee the Famous," alluding to the Ouija board and his knack for being first on the scene is in his days as a roving news and street photographer. It wasn't an accident or any supernatural pre-disposition that he was there first at the fires, murders and general mayhem that he recorded in Gotham. Weegee was the first photographer to have a police scanner (originally in his one room tenement flat across the street from NYC police headquarters and later getting another for his Buick). His photographs of New York from the 30s and 40s are iconographic images of the city and it's inhabitants (both high and low) and important photographs, whether he intended them to be or not. It's been suggested that he was naive, and not a sophisticated photographer, but I don't really believe it, and it doesn't really matter. These pictures are as real as it gets, and great works of art. (see Atget) Later in his career, when he got the idea that he was an artiste is when the pictures became less interesting. (see Richard Avedon)



"I will walk many times with friends down the street and they'll say 'Hey, Weegee. Here's a drunk or two drunks laying on the gutter' I take one quick look at that and say 'They lack character.' So, even a drunk must be a masterpiece!"

A few weeks ago, my friend Chris was in town visiting and we spent part of an afternoon walking around downtown and looking at some of my old favorite places in the city. We came up through Chinatown, and on towards the old police headquarters on Centre Market Place. I told him "Weegee used to live right here, you know." We proceeded up the street, and looking for the John Jovino Gun Shop that had been there since at least the time of the Weegee (he lived upstairs) and I realized it was gone. I found out later that it actually moved around the corner, but something felt strange, like so much of this city that has disappeared in its post-Giuliani homogenization. I've been thinking about it a lot recently as I've been digging through my own archive of photographs that I made in my early days here in New York. I wonder what Weegee would think of the new niceness of his city. He didn't love the misery that the tenements that he grew up in bred - and no one should - but the drama and street theater of New York that he thrived on has been altered in ways that probably wouldn't please him.

Weegee was seltzer, sour pickles, and pastrami.





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BONUS:




Download:

"Henri Cartier-Bresson" mp3
by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1958.
from Famous Photographers Tell How
out of print

Another segment from Famous Photographers Tell How with
Henri Cartier-Bresson. Eloquent, dry, and French like the great philosopher/mathematician image maker that he was.



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This record and thousands more, as well as interesting curios of old from near and far are available at Homer & Langley's Mystery Spot Antiques, located in downtown Phoenicia, New York. Tell 'em I sent you.