psychohobbit 's review for:

Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous by Christopher Bonanos

5.0

---

This is an interesting biography of the photographer known as Weegee that also gives a great portrait of New York City in the first part to mid-twentieth century. There are also some interesting connections/names when Weegee goes to Hollywood later in this life - around the 1950s and 1960s. The author clearly appreciates Weegee and yet points out his flaws. Even when information about Weegee conflicts, the author offers his best guess while clearly identifying it as such. For those who don't know, Weegee, whose name was Arthur Fellig, was known for crime scene photography in the first part of the twentieth century. Most of the stereotypes about newspaper photographers such as the crumpled suits and the pushy manner is based on Weegee. As he evolved beyond photographing dead bodies, he also picked up on poignant photographs of loved ones'/people's reactions to tragedies, a trend that has gone way too far since then in the media. As he got older, he moved into experimenting with distorted images which was pretty impressive as it was done without Photoshop or other digital manipulation. This book effectively capture Weegee as the outsider looking in which I suspect may be a common feeling among some photographers. Weegee and his family moved from eastern Europe to New York City when he was just a small child. They lived in terrible overcrowded tenements as Jewish people. I agree with the author that it's rather extraordinary that Weegee got into the photography field, a very new area at the time, and it's impressive how he worked his way up. Because his life was such a struggle, he had little education or interest in the normal social niceties or trappings of life so it's fair to say he had a lot of bad traits. Like most of us, he was a mixture of good and bad except his was blended in an exceptional way. As Weegee stated, "You can't be a nice Nellie and do photography."