Arthur (Usher) Fellig (June 12, 1899 – December 26, 1968), known by his pseudonym Weegee, was a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography in New York City.

[1] Weegee worked in Manhattan's Lower East Side as a press photographer during the 1930s and 1940s and developed his signature style by following the city's emergency services and documenting their activity.

Weegee was born Ascher (later modified to Usher) Fellig in Złoczów (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), near Lemberg in Galicia-Lodomeria, a region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The father of the family, Bernard Fellig, emigrated in 1908, followed in 1909 by his wife and their four children, including "Usher Felik", as his name was spelled on the steerage passenger list of the steamship, Kaiserin Auguste Victoria.

[5] His photographs, centered around Manhattan police headquarters, were soon published by the Daily News and other tabloids, as well as more upscale publication such as Life magazine.

[7] He traveled extensively in Europe until 1964, working for the London Daily Mirror and on a variety of photography, film, lecture, and book projects.

One of his earliest jobs was in the photo lab of The New York Times, where (in a reference to the tool used to wipe down prints) he was nicknamed "squeegee boy".

Later, during his employment with Acme Newspictures, his skill and ingenuity in developing prints on the run (e.g., in a subway car) earned him the name "Mr.

He also carried a flashlight for adjusting his camera settings in the dark.Some of Weegee's photos, like the juxtaposition of society grandes dames in ermines and tiaras and a glowering street woman at the Metropolitan Opera (The Critic, 1943), were later revealed to have been staged.

[22] Later the title was used again for a naturalistic television police drama series, and in the 1980s, it was adopted by a band, Naked City, led by the New York experimental musician John Zorn.

[citation needed] According to the commentary by director Robert Wise, Weegee appeared in the 1949 film The Set-Up, ringing the bell at the boxing match.

[citation needed] Weegee experimented with 16mm filmmaking himself beginning in 1941 and worked in the Hollywood industry from 1946 to the early 1960s, as an actor and a consultant.

He was an uncredited special effects consultant[23] and credited stills photographer for Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Called The 'Imp'probable Mr. Wee Gee, it saw Fellig apparently falling in love with a shop-window dummy that he follows to Paris, all the while pursuing or photographing various women.

Weegee's themes of nudists, circus performers, freaks and street people were later taken up and developed by Diane Arbus in the early 1960s.

[27] As a bequest, Wilma Wilcox donated the entire Weegee archive – 16,000 photographs and 7,000 negatives[7] – to the International Center of Photography in New York.