Weegee: Serial Photographer

Nicknamed WEEGEE, a play on the ouija board game, the Belgian author Max de Radiguès and illustrator Wauter Mannaert have captured the essence of this freelance photographer named Arthur Fellig, who excelled in black and white film during the mid 1900s. His subject material focused on crime and accident scenes in lower Manhattan. This photographer chomping on a cigar, always with his folding rolex camera with flash attachment on his shoulder would incredibly turn up at murder sites before the police arrived. For a better shot, he sometimes rearranged the position of the dead body. He would develop the photos in his portable lab in the back of his car and then run to the local newspapers to sell these gruesome images. The author, illustrator, and translator do a magnificent job of blending the words and scenery in this graphic edition portraying the fanatic drive of this compulsive character who so amazingly recorded the life of the city with his scenes of city nightlife and the folks who crowded the streets and filled the tenements. WEEGEE was an artist in B&W, and this B&W graphic story aptly records the drama of this complex photojournalists and his unique photographic compositions..