Renown as Weegee (in reference to the Ouija board and his premonitory sense for scenes of crime), Arthur Fellig was famed for his photographs of nocturnal New York. In the late 1930s, Weegee installed a police radio in his personal vehicle to ensure he was the first photographer to arrive at any incident. His iconic pictures appeared frequently in newspapers and magazines across the United States. Often sensationally shot as film-noir-like studies in contrast, Weegee’s camera zeroed in on social and economic realities, and often in so doing, exposed ethical contradictions. The event in The Critic was instigated by the photographer, who lured an inebriated woman from the Bowery to Uptown, specifically to the red-carpet entryway of the Metropolitan Opera House. Here Weegee staged an unexpected encounter between two socialite women dressed regally in fur wraps and tiaras and the scrutiny of the tousled-haired drunk woman on the right.
The Critic offers an indicting commentary on the tragic-comic disconnect between the rich and the poor, the divides of economic class, and the frivolities of excess. While the wealthy women in Weegee’s photograph (Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh and Lady Decies) focus exclusively on the camera before them, eyes forward and poised for the flash of the camera, they pay no attention to the disheveled and disenfranchised woman judging them harshly on the right.
Weegee’s work demonstrates a curious negotiation between mass media and fine art. The Museum of Modern Art began collecting Weegee’s photographs in the early 1940s, exhibiting them first in 1943. “Naked City” (1945) represents his most famous photobook.
Weegee’s The Critic is currently featured in “The Distance Between You and Me is Us.” This exhibition was curated by this year’s ArtLab, a collaboration between Dr. Heather Diack, Avani Choudhary, Sarah Decossard, Robert Govaerts, Mary Jimenez, Neeharika Madala, Anthony Magnetti, and Danielle Stoller. To see the virtual exhibition “The Distance Between You and Me is Us,” visit our website’s “Digital Engagement” page.
— Dr. Heather Diack, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Miami.
