The art of photographing in the darkness of a movie theater

BarcelonaWeegee is one of the great masters of photography. Born in 1899 in present-day Ukraine, Arthur Usher Fellig chose this pseudonym when he began working as a photographer in New York, where he emigrated in 1909. A prominent photographer with a very personal style, his high-contrast street photographs ended up in the spotlight. He captured the Lower East Side of the American city in the 1930s and 1940s. Much of his work documents realistic scenes of urban life, crime, injuries, and deaths. This work is a showcase of his documentary talent. Using infrared negative film, he photographed the audience at several movie theater screenings in the city. These are some of the photographs that the Getty Agency is distributing from its catalog of the International Center of Photography in New York.