Weegee (Usher Fellig)
[Photographer, b. 1899, Zlothew near Lemberg, Austrian Galicia (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), d. 1968, New York.]
There are photographic fanatics, just as there are religious fanatics. They buy a so-called candid camera... there is no such thing: it’s the photographer who has to be candid, not the camera.
I had so many unsold murder pictures lying around my room... I felt as if I were renting out a wing of the City Morgue.
The same camera that photographs a murder scene can photograph a beautiful society affair at a big hotel.
Sure. I’d like to live regular. Go home to a goodlooking wife, a hot dinner, and a husky kid. But I guess I got film in my blood. I love this racket. It’s exciting. It’s dangerous. It’s funny. It’s tough. It’s heartbreaking.
If I had a picture of two handcuffed criminals being booked, I would cut the picture in half and get five bucks for each.
It’s been a strange [summer].... I was sent by a magazine to photograph famous photographers.... Of course, I included myself.
(To Peter Sellers on the set of Dr. Strangelove,
1963)
To me a photograph is a page from life, and that being the case, it must be real.
I can take a camera and paint with it. Nobody has exhausted the possibilities of the camera.
