An excellent exhibition has just opened at the International Center for Photography on 43rd and 6th called Weegee: Murder is my business. This isn’t the first time Weegee’s work has been shown at the ICP, the first was in the 80’s when a film director saw the exhibition and was so impressed that he made a film called The Public Eye, with Joe Pesci playing the lead role. That’s how I learnt about Weegee.

Weegee was a photographer who became famous in the 30’s and 40’s for capturing street life in New York. He operated out of his car with a police radio, chasing murders and crimes and taking dramatic shots with a quirky perspective – like a photo of a crumpled murder victim surrounded by cops in front of a cinema advertising a film called ‘Joy of Living’.  Or a shot of a woman in the drivers seat of her car in shock after just hitting and killing a pedestrian. There are just so many shots that are full of emotion. I wasn’t too fussed about the dead body shots, but the work that caught people right in the middle of a thought, they were brilliant. Weegee took pictures of lost children at Coney Island, of families sleeping on the fire escape during a heat wave, and of men in the back of a police van, covering their faces with their top hats so they wouldn’t be recognised. But the reason he took pictures of dead bodies was because he said it was easy, they didn’t move…

Weegee has been called the father of tabloid journalism, but I think he was more like Bill Cunningham is today. Instead of chasing fashion, Weegee chased murder.