I missed Christopher Bonanos’ Flash — The Making of Weegee the Famous when it came out in 2018. I can’t be certain, though. Part of me thinks that I did notice the book. But I had previously read Weegee’s “autobiography”, and I think that had discouraged me from looking further into the man’s life (until I came across a copy of Flash a little while ago in a local second-hand bookshop).
Of that “autobiography”, Bonanos writes that it is “an oddly opaque book”. I didn’t think so. He writes that “by the end, even as he seems mildly appalling, he wins you over. He seems fun.” (p. 291) The word “mildly” has to do a lot of work there. Furthermore, no, and no. Weegee didn’t win me over, and he certainly did not seem fun (but what do I know about fun, what with me being originally German?).
Whatever thoughts I had about Weegee, his Naked City is a masterpiece of a book, mostly because it’s actually more nuanced and intelligent than its makers might have realized. If it were merely some assembly of the kinds of gore pictures the photographer became and remains well known for, it would be a dud. But there is a tenderness that leads you through the book and that convinces you, or at least me (because your mileage might vary), that there is more than mere photographic effect.
Naked City is the depiction of New York City at a certain point in time, parts of which have survived, and larger parts of which are now long gone. For sure, Weegee would not recognize the area where he first lived when he arrived with his family. The tenements are gone; the brutal capitalism that has been driving this city now expresses itself differently.
The follow-up Weegee’s People mostly is a dud, because what had made Naked City so good was now gone. And Naked Hollywood is, well, a sorry-ass disaster of a book: it is as if the photographer had pursued his worst instincts, and nobody had had the guts (or heart) to say that the world did not need to see how far Weegee had fallen.
The man’s “autobiography” had not provided any insight. It’s not necessarily that I need to know about people’s private lives (personally, I’m a very private person). It’s just that I am interested in learning how photographers (and artists) arrive at what they produce. Or rather how some of them do, because honestly, there are a lot of photographers and artists where I don’t care, where, in other words, whatever life experiences they might have had, to me they seem irrelevant. For them, the work will suffice.
And it’s not necessarily people whose work I admire where I might seek out insight into their lives. This endeavour doesn’t always work out (in fact, it mostly does not). When, for example, Avedon: Something Personal was published, I bought a copy. I wanted to find out whether there was a person of substance (any substance really) behind the work, some of which I admire, some of which I loathe.
I never found out. For me, Avedon: Something Personal is an unreadable exercise in hagiography, an endless parade of how brilliant “Dick” was. Honestly, there’s no insight to be gained for a reader (or, for that matter, writer) if you start out by declaring genius at the very beginning: there’s no hill left to climb, and anything you can offer will become subservient to the idea of genius (you see, only a genius would buy this brand of toothpaste and not that one).
My interest in Avedon was different than the one in Weegee. The Avedon one was more specific, and by now I did receive an answer to some of my questions (I will write about this in the very near future).
In some ways, Avedon and Weegee were very similar in that they both cultivated a very specific image of themselves, however different they might have been.
With Avedon, it was always clear to me that he had had an inner life and that he was aware of what he was doing. With Weegee, I was never sure. It’s not even that I wanted to know a lot more about Weegee, it was just that I wanted to know that he had had some inner life. If he did… I mean obviously, he did. What I was after were some hints what it might have been.
Having read Flash — The Making of Weegee the Famous I don’t think I know all that much more about the man. This is not to belittle Bonanos’ effort. I do know a lot more about certain things. For example, I now know that the famous photograph The Critic was arranged: the photographer had liquored up an acquaintance and brought her along to ogle at wealthy people arriving at the Metropolitan Opera.
There had been talk of Weegee arranging things here and there — possibly moving a dead man’s hat for photographic effect or even moving a dead man to get a better picture near a sign. I personally don’t think that purely photographically speaking any of this truly matters all that much; or rather moving a hat doesn’t seem quite as bad as moving a body (if it actually happened; these stories might merely have been expressions of jealousy by other photographers).
And really, the drunk acquaintance in The Critic is a stand-in for the man himself, because behind all the bluster and the stories was a man who appeared to have known and detested that he was widely seen as uncultured. That is, in fact, the actual word that was used in a newspaper article about him early on, uncultured.
“Uncultured” is a giveaway (much like “normal” is): no person is uncultured. It’s just that some people have different cultures than others. Originally, Weegee was from Złoczów — now Zolochiv and part of Ukraine, then some outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was born as Ascher (later Usher, later Arthur) Fellig, and he was Jewish. The family wasn’t wealthy back in Złoczów, and it certainly wasn’t when everybody had made their way to New York City.
That newspaper calling him uncultured gave away the game, and we must assume that Weegee knew. There’s no other explanation for the fact that he clearly detested the very circles that he tried so very hard later in life to finally become a part of. But we can’t know for sure.
At some stage, Flash — The Making of Weegee the Famous becomes a progression of narrations around which picture was taken when or the kinds of pictures taken in what month or week or whatever. This is a wee bit tedious, and it frustrated me, given that I wanted to know about the man and not his pictures.
The end of the prohibition was basically the end of Weegee because as murder rates dropped and as organized crime ceased to be the menace it had been, a lot of pictures just disappeared. And thus Naked City turned into Weegee’s People: hard-hitting material that revealed the abyss of the human condition turned into a mostly sentimental simulation of what binds people together.
Weegee without the murders simply wasn’t Weegee any longer. Instead, the photographer kept repeating the same tropes (and pictures). It didn’t help that he thought forms of trick photography would do anything for him. And that’s ignoring the shallow lechery that increasingly showed up in some of his photographs.
I can’t be certain after reading Bonanos’ biography, but I don’t think Weegee understood what made some of his own pictures so good. Part of the reason appeared to have been that his mode of work almost inevitably required making new pictures. If your actual livelihood depends on getting pictures so you can pay for that little room you live in, it’s not surprising that there might simply be no time to spend more time with what you’ve made.
Weegee’s disdain of the circles who thought of him as uncultured is fully understandable; and yet, looking down on other Photo League photographers who might have known a thing or two about how to learn more about one’s work probably wasn’t the greatest idea.
Regardless, I don’t think that I got my answer after reading Flash — The Making of Weegee the Famous, and that’s not Bonanos’ fault. Maybe I don’t have to know more about the man who produced Naked City. Maybe having a copy of the original book in my library is good enough.
For whatever combination of circumstances and life decisions that weren’t pondered too closely, Weegee made the work he made: pictures that were and still are right in your face. And the prohibition era provided just the right environment with just the right material to have him succeed from there — and fail so miserably later.
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