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WeegeeWeegee "Sailor and Girl Kissing"1943
1943
$3,600
£2,733.05
€3,150.76
CA$5,092.70
A$5,482.75
CHF 2,936.12
MX$66,065.20
NOK 37,045.70
SEK 33,902.80
DKK 23,543.76
About the Item
Weegee (1899-1968) was equally fascinated and inspired by cinema and all of its tangents, from Hollywood movie stars to ordinary civilians going to the movies. While Weegee is typically associated with crime/disaster images, the broad theme of "entertainment" is a major component of his oeuvre.
An interesting and provocative sub-genre of his cinema-related work are his images of couples (often heavy-petting) in movie theatres.
Recent scholarship has established that many of Weegee's supposed clandestine images were actually staged or arranged with friends or co-operative strangers.
Nevertheless, Weegee created these photographs in the dark with an array of clever techniques including infrared film, filtered flashbulb and triangular prism lens. Employed in shots such as this one, the prism lens would allow the artist to “see around corners,” useful at times when his subjects were in compromising locations.
These images of kissing couples, Weegee wrote in 1959, were “his best seller, year in and year out.”
"Sailor and GIrl at the Movies, New York" is held in the permanent collection of the International Centre of Photography, New York.
Questions about this work? Contact us.
"Sailor and Girl at the Movies, New York"
Annotated “Children” and “426” in pencil verso.
Silver gelatin print
USA, circa 1943
8"H 7"W (work)
Framed with museum glass
Detailed condition report upon request.
- Creator:Weegee (1899-1968, American)
- Creation Year:1943
- Dimensions:Height: 7 in (17.78 cm)Width: 6.5 in (16.51 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Toronto, CA
- Reference Number:Seller: 04-201stDibs: LU21526016652
Weegee
Arthur Fellig, who later assumed the pseudonym Weegee, was a photographer and photojournalist, best known for his gritty black-and-white imagery taken on the streets of New York City. Born in 1899 in what is now the Ukraine, he arrived in the United States with his family in 1909, and settled in Brooklyn. After working in a variety of photography-related jobs, he struck out on his own at the age of 35 as a self-taught freelance photographer, selling his work to publications like the Herald Tribune, the Daily News, the Post, and the Sun. Weegee worked mostly at night, usually around Manhattan Police Headquarters. He was the only freelancer in New York to obtain permission to install a police radio in his car. As a result, he was often the first to arrive at the scene of the many crimes he photographed, often before the police themselves had responded. Moreover, he traveled with a makeshift darkroom in the trunk of his car, so he could produce, and then sell, his images faster than his competitors. But crime was not his only subject. He also photographed socialites at high-society events, circus performers, street life, tenement housing conditions, and many other facets of New York life. For a number of years he traveled extensively in Europe, and worked for the London Daily Mirror. He later returned to New York City, where he died in 1968. Th Museum of Modern Art began collecting his work in 1943, and featured it in several exhibitions. His work was also shown at the New York Photo League, and the International Center of Photography hosted a retrospective of his work in 1998. He has been featured in exhibitions at European venues such as the Kunsthalle Vienna, Austria's Flatz Museum, and the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow. Several monographs of his work have been published.
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