‘Weegee: Murder Is My Business’

New York City leads a double life. One is for the family—it flaunts Little Orphan Annie on 42nd Street, parades Macy’s on Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, and immortalizes the Statue of Liberty just south of Lower Manhattan. The other life is a hidden one, for the mistress–filled with mobsters, crime scenes, and slums.

“Weegee: Murder Is My Business,” at the International Center for Photography from Jan. 20 to Sept. 2, exhibits the photography of Weegee, the prolific photographer and self-promoter, as he immerses himself in this dirtier version of the city, specifically, the murder scenes, as the title of the exhibit suggests.

Though critics often state that Weegee was uninterested in creating “fine art,” this declaration is misleading. The exhibit’s photographs, though organic and unpretentious, are those of a master photographer, one who understood very well the techniques used to conceive an evocative photograph. These photographs, which originally appeared primarily in news tabloids and self-curated exhibitions, portray a violent, haphazard New York—a city lacking in reason, and resting far too comfortably with its daily butchery (Weegee himself claimed to have covered over 5000 murders).

Weegee self-consciously engineers the powerful effect, almost like film noir. The self-portraits in the first gallery seem to illustrate a character straight out of a Raymond Chandler novel. Photographs show Weegee, built like a bulldog, dressed in a pinstripe suit, almost always with a cigar hanging out the corner of his mouth, looking at police evidence or pieces of broken glass recovered from a crime scene. Weegee clearly had an obsession with crime. One can almost see him soaking up the novelty of a jail cell or the gunsmith’s shop near a police station. His bedroom and studio, reconstructed for the exhibit, seemed to be dreamed up for a brooding detective, complete with a rusty steel frame twin bed, dirty blankets, and walls covered in gruesome newspaper clippings.

Weegee’s photography can be sensationalistic in its presentation, but subtle in its effects. One of Weegee’s defining characteristics as a photographer is his focus on the bystanders that surround “news.” Murder is only the first domino for Weegee. He finds his true fascination in the faces transfixed by the murder. With expressions ranging from concerned, to perplexed, to altogether deadpan, all are fairly composed, compared to the shock that the viewers of Weegee’s violent photography can experience.

Weegee’s world is one that negotiates murder as news and murder as that which tears lives and communities apart. Though the same elements play a role in most of Weegee’s crime scenes (the police men collecting evidence, yellow tape isolating the incident, and cop cars converging around the victim), the viewer must pause at the bereaved who scatter the galleries. Though the surrounding environment is hectic, the actual murder scenes are still. The crimes Weegee depicts are their own worlds; seemingly ignored and isolated from those for whom they do not hold immediate impact.

“Weegee: Murder Is My Business,” can be a powerful experience for those willing to consider the reality beyond the bloody foreground. A room in which murder is “business” has echoes that are shouted and whispered throughout the exhibit.