8-1/4 x 7-5/8 in.
stamped, verso, u.r.: CREDIT PHOTO BY WEEGEE THE FAMOUS stamped, verso, c.: PLEASE CREDIT/WEEGEE/FROM/PHOTO-REPRESENTATIVES
Caroline Marmon Fesler Fund, Gift of the Alliance of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Roger G. Wolcott Fund, Nancy Foxwell Neuberger Acquisition Endowment Fund, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore P. Van Vorhees Art Fund, Cecil F. Head Art Fund, James V. Sweetser Fund
Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
Wilma Wilcox, New York, New York [1903-1993]; Acquired by her niece, Mary Ellen Kessler, Indianapolis in 1993. Purchased by (Steve H. Nowlin, Indianapolis) in 2003. Purchased by Indianapolis Museum of Art in 2009.
A close-up cropped image focuses attention on the hand of an African American man reading a book. Although the image is in black and white, one can clearly make out the fabric of his coat and infer that he is standing in a crowd. Left to the imagination, however, is the book that this man is reading and the situation in which he finds himself photographed.
As a press photographer during the 1930s and '40s, Weegee documented the activity of New York City’s emergency services. Following ambulances and police resulted in photographs characterized by their unflinching realism, depicting scenes of urban life and crime. Weegee earned his nickname—a phonetic spelling of the occult board game Ouija—due to his uncanny ability to arrive at crime scenes just moments after they happened.
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