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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
 Girl jumped out of car, and was killed, on Park Avenue (c. 1940). |
This picture shows a girl who leapt from a moving car on Park Avenue. Young says that she chose it in spite of the preponderance of Weegee shots of dead bodies. “This is a version we don’t know from other exhibitions,” she said. “This is a woman who’s fallen out of a cab and it’s poignant that, well, it’s a woman.” The victim’s body is enshrouded in a sheet, but her little black pocketbook remains in plain view.
Corpse pictures were Weegee’s bread and butter: they were easy to sell to newspapers and he also sold them to insurance companies. In 1968, Weegee told the New York Times, “I sort of circle around the scene not showing a lot of blood, I take corpses from an angle that makes ’em look comfortable.”
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