PHOTOGRAPHER: WEEGEE (ARTHUR FELLIG) HANDWRITTEN LTR SIGNED SHOWING HIS FILMS, USING INFRARED FILM, KALEIDOSCOPE SHOT

PHOTOGRAPHER: WEEGEE (ARTHUR FELLIG) HANDWRITTEN LTR SIGNED, "Weegee", 4 pages, 5.5 x 7, 30 APR 1963, on Mapleton Hotel, Piccadilly Circus, London letterhead, to Wilma Wilcox, about showing Shell Oil his films and requesting a retainer, using infrared film at a spiritualism event "to communicate with the other world", and about working with another photographer "a kaleidoscope shot in color".  Comes with the original mailing envelope which he handwrote and also signed, "Weegee". Both items are in fine condition.

Weegee (1899-1968) was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig a famous New York City photographer and photojournalist in the 1940's and 1950's known for his stark black and white street photography: images of murder, mayhem, dead gangsters, Harlem blacks, famous personalities, and other dramatic events. His career spanned four decades on both coasts as well as Europe. His images of dead gangsters and his own flamboyant personality established his reputation as New York's "crime photographer," a reputation and persona he nurtured. The New York Museum of Modern Art acquired some his photographs and many of his images have appeared in multiple books.  In the 1950's and 1960's he experimented with photo distortions and photography through prisms that created caricatured images.

Wilma Wilcox was a Quaker social worker who Weegee lived with for over a decade before his death in 1968. She inherited his entire archive of original prints and subsequently donated them to the International Center for Photography on her death in 1993.

$625  #10730