Man arrested for cross-dressing, New York, photographed by Weegee, circa 1939.

Weegee at his typewriter in the trunk of his 1938 Chevy, New York, circa 1943.

Charles Sodokoff and Arthur Webber use their top hats to hide their faces, New York, 1942.

Night… a black velvet curtain has dropped over the white sky… a few mothers went looking for their kids… found them here… dragged them home for supper… but they are back again… but that’s the same Empire State Building in the Background...., New York, 1944.

Lovers at the movies, New York, circa 1943.

Tenement sleeping during heat spell, Lower East Side, New York, 1941.

Fire in loft building, New York, circa 1947.

*Drowning Victim, Coney Island,* circa 1940.

Grit and Glam

From tabloid shots in New York to portraits of Hollywood stars, the Ukrainian photographer Weegee did it all

In 1935, when he was 35, Weegee started working as a freelance photographer in New York City. He’d gotten his hands on a police radio, which crackled day and night, and spent a lot of time in his car waiting for reports of murders, fires, and accidents. When they happened, he rushed to the scene and captured brutal imagery: gangsters face down, floating in pools of their own blood; mangled bodies in car-crash wreckage; criminals leering out of barred trucks on their way to prison.

Weegee was feeding a new beast. The tabloid press was on the rise, and his sensationalist pictures served it well. The New York Herald-Tribune, the Daily News, the New York Post, The Sun, and PM Weekly all bought in, and Weegee soon became well known.