Weegee - Naked City

Copyright 1945 by Essential Books;
copyright renewed 1973 by Hawthorn Books, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.

This De Capo Press ebook edition of Naked City is an unabridged republication of the edition published in New York in 1945. It is reprinted by arrangement with E. P. Dutton, Inc.

Cataloging in Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 0-306-81204-5

Published by Da Capo Press
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
http://www.decapopress.com

TO YOU
THE PEOPLE OF NEW YORK

Persons looking on Weegees incredible photographs for the first time find it hard to believe that one ordinary earth-bound human being could have been present at so many climactic moments in the citys life.

The simplest explanation of the phenomenon is that true love endows a man with superhuman qualities, and Weegee is truly in love with New York. Not the New York that you and I know, but the New York that he has known, first as a poor immigrant boy and later as a free-lance newspaper photographer specializing in crime and violence.

Loving the city, Weegee has been able to live with her in the utmost intimacy. When he goes to bed in his room across the street from police headquarters, the city murmurs to him from the police-approved shortwave radio beside his bed. Even in slumber he is responsive to her. He will sleep through fifteen unpromising police calls and leap out of bed at the promising sixteenth. In sickness and in health he will take his camera and ride off in search of new evidence that his city, even in her most drunken and disorderly and pathetic moments, is beautiful. Of course Weegee, being an Artist, has his own conception of what constitutes beauty, and in some cases it is hard for us to share his conception; but insofar as we can share it, we can share his love for the city.

When he cruises in his 1938 Chevrolet, his love is beside him, talking to him from another shortwave radio: and as he listens to her he is also watching her, and he will stop to photograph the drunk asleep in front of the funeral parlor as further evidence of his loves infinite variety.

Weegee is a rather portly, cigar-smoking, irregularly shaven man who has seen and recorded a great deal of ugliness and disaster, but he remains as shy and sensitive as if he had spent his life photographing babies and bridesmaids. This, I think, is further evidence that he has been inspired not by a taste for sensationalism but by his love for the city and her children-especially the troubled and unfortunate ones, the kitten-loving ones who sleep on fire escapes in the summer.

I think that Weegees subjective portrait of New York must be regarded as a work of creative art, because, although all of the elements were there for anyone to use, no one has ever used them as Weegee has. This portrait lived first in Weegees heart and imagination. He patiently sought and painstakingly assembled those elements in a manner that would make it possible for us to see his city and believe it, and love it-and yet want to make it better. You dont want those kids to go on sleeping on that fire escape forever, do you?

New York

William McCleery

Editor, PM Picture News

Weegee and his Lovehis Camera

A BOOK IS BORN

One just doesnt go up to strange men, women, children, elephants, or giraffes and say, Look this way please. Laugh, cryshow some emotion or go to sleep underneath a funeral canopy. They would have called me crazy and called a cop who would have called the wagon with the guys in white and I would have wound up in the psychopathic ward at Bellevue Hospital in a strait jacket.

For the pictures in this book I was on the scene; sometimes drawn there by some power I cant explain, and I caught the New Yorkers with their masks off... not afraid to Laugh, Cry, or make Love. What I felt I photographed, laughing and crying with them.

I have been told that my pictures should be in a book, that they were a great social document. As I keep to myself, belong to no group, like to be left alone with no axe to grind, I wouldnt know. Then something happened. There was a sudden drop in Murders and Fires (my two best sellers, my bread and butter). I couldnt understand that. With so many millions of people, it just wasnt normal, but it did give me a chance to look over the pictures I had been accumulating. Put together, they seemed to form a pattern. I posted the photographs up into a dummy book and left it with the publishers with a note This is my brain child... handle with care please.

The people in these photoqraphs are real. Some from the East Side and Harlem tenements, others are from Park Avenue. In most cases, they werent even aware they were being photographed and cared less. People like to be photographed and will always ask What paper are you from, mister, and what day will they appear, the jitterbugs and the Sinatra bobby-sock fans even want to know on what page it will appear. To me a photograph is a page from life, and that being the case, it must be real.

W EEGEES NAKED CITY

SUNDAY MORNING IN MANHATTAN

This is the most peaceful time of the whole week. Everything is so quiet... no traffic noises... and no crime either. People are just too exhausted for anything. The Sunday papers, all bundled up, are thrown on the sidewalk in front of the stillclosed candy stores and newspaper stands. New Yorkers like their Sunday papers, especially the lonely men and women who live in furnished rooms. They leave early to get the papers... they get two. One of the standard-size papers, either the Times or Tribune... theyre thick and heavy, plenty of reading in them, and then also the tabloid Mirror... to read Winchell and learn all about Cafe Society and the Broadway playboys and their Glamour Girl Friends. Then back to the room... to read and read... to drive away loneliness... but one tires of reading. One wants someone to talk to, to argue with, and yes, someone to make love to. How about a movieNOtoo damn much talking on the screen. But Darling I do love you... RAHLLY I do,.. then the final clinch with the lovers in each others arms... then its even worse, to go back alone to the furnished room... to look up at the ceiling and cry oneself to sleep.

Sunday morning is the only time these cuties get a chance to get cleaned up... while the store is closed... they are taken out from the store window... their garments with price tags removed... and given a thorough scrubbing... the mannequins are patterned after the current Hollywood movie glamour stars... and are worth their weight in gold, each one costing a few hundred dollars.