Man Finds Box of Unseen Weegee Photos in His Kitchen Cabinet
Back in 1970, artist David Young purchased a box of old news photos at a Philadelphia thrift store. After moving to Seattle, Young put the box in his kitchen cabinet and forgot about it for years. It turns out that box contains unseen 1930s crime photos by the famed New York City photographer Weegee.
Young then got in touch with city editor Christopher Bonanos of New York Magazine, Weegee’s biographer. Bonanos recognized the handwriting on the photos as Weegee’s.
“When [the discovered photos] hit my in-box, I about fell out of my chair,” Bonanos writes at Vulture. There are 73 prints, and 49 of them bear Weegee’s stamp; the unmarked ones too are surely his. Not one of these pictures is duplicated in the biggest collection of Weegee’s work, which is his own estate, held at the International Center of Photography.”
Most of the photos had never been seen before by Bonanos and curators at International Center of Photography, which holds the largest collection of Weegee’s work. And experts note that some of the photos may be among Weegee’s best photos.
Bonanos has been working to link the found photos to news stories from over 80 years ago, and he has successfully found dates, locations, and captions for about 80% of them.
People occasionally ask about the research I did for my book, so here's a thread about how I identified the location of this previously unknown Weegee photograph. Thread follows. pic.twitter.com/SOPrjxcyRM
— Christopher Bonanos (@heybonanos) May 15, 2019
I started with a weak guess—based on the look of the buildings and the el and the fact that the people in the photo were African-American—that it was in Harlem.
— Christopher Bonanos (@heybonanos) May 15, 2019
Then I spotted a clue: a barely readable street sign reading 8TH AVE. (My colleague Aaron Garza brightened it up in Photoshop to confirm.) The cross street wasn't legible. pic.twitter.com/Na3y8KKzSu
— Christopher Bonanos (@heybonanos) May 15, 2019
That meant this was the old Ninth Avenue Elevated, which hooked over to Eighth Avenue in Harlem. And there's a stairway there, which means this corner had an el station. That narrowed it down to eight intersections…
— Christopher Bonanos (@heybonanos) May 15, 2019
…so I started marching down Eighth Avenue and checking each of those corners: 155th, 150th, 145th, etc. But nothing matched. Too many buildings are new.
— Christopher Bonanos (@heybonanos) May 15, 2019
Then I remembered something: The tax photos! In 1940, New York City photographed every single building in town, and those photos, previously available only by mail, went online recently. So I did the same crawl down Eighth Avenue through the Municipal Archives.
— Christopher Bonanos (@heybonanos) May 15, 2019
And I found the building with the CHINESE HAND LAUNDRY sign. The photo of the buildings across the street matched, too. So now I had an intersection: 135th Street and Eighth Avenue. pic.twitter.com/cM7K76Ksri
— Christopher Bonanos (@heybonanos) May 15, 2019
One of the other photos in this cache is of a wrecked car that had belonged to the actor Stepin Fetchit, and I'd found that story (different photo) in the @nydailynews. That crash had been at 135th and Eighth, and he'd run into an elevated-train pillar. pic.twitter.com/wlCyGf78Mr
— Christopher Bonanos (@heybonanos) May 15, 2019
And I know that Weegee's signature move was to photograph the observers at a news event, rather than just the news event itself, and that he was not above asking someone to act as an observer. (Occasionally he even put his camera on a tripod and posed himself.) So …
— Christopher Bonanos (@heybonanos) May 15, 2019
…clearly what he did was shoot the car wherever it had been towed, and then go back to the scene, grab a few local kids, tell them to gawk, and make a poignant scene. Maybe he slipped them a couple of bucks.
— Christopher Bonanos (@heybonanos) May 15, 2019
“To my knowledge, not one of these pictures has been published for 82 years,” Bonanos writes.
While the photography world will benefit from a new trove of a famous photographer’s work, Young will likely benefit financially from his find: individual Weegee photos have sold at auction for well over $10,000.
