LETTER FROM NEW YORK

PHOTO ESSAY

Shot in the Dark

A new exhibition focuses on the lesser-known photos of the late, great Weegee

By Lauren Mechling
July 26, 2006

• 1
|
• 2
|
• 3
|
• 4
|
• 5
|
• 6
|
• 7
|
• 8
|
• 9

Water Main Burst Uproots Madison Avenue (1938).

“One doesn’t need a scenario or shooting script,” Weegee once wrote. “All one needs to do is to be on the spot, alert, and human.” He took his camera all over New York — from the Lower East Side to Times Square to Harlem to Coney Island. Yet most of his pictures are of people; rare was a photograph of the city itself. This picture of a water main break suggests the relentless pressure that the people of New York faced every day. “It’s also just plain weird,” Young says. “He liked that.”