The layers of artifice at the Ryerson Image Centre’s current exhibition are so thick, you could stab them with a butcher knife. They start with the perp himself. Born in what is now the Ukraine but raised on the scum-strewn streets of the Big Apple. He became the signature photographer of its rotten core. His name? Arthur Fellig. But he’ll be known forever and always as Weegee or Weegee the Famous, as he referred to himself. Well before another New York artist (Warhol the Famous) turned self-creation into a self-conscious thing, this guy was busy making self-portraits of himself done up in police dick drag, chomping cigars, and wielding his camera like a .45 service revolver. That is, he did it between all night scavenger hunts around Manhattan to be first on the scene to shoot the bleeding that would be leading the next day’s tabloids. 
Weegee, Charles Sodokoff and Arthur Webber using their top hats to hide their faces, New York, 1942, gelatin silver print
However, that might overstate the amount of grue on view. Other than a couple post-plugging face planted ex-criminal types, the real subjects of these carefully calibrated scenarios (the onion of artifice peels off some more skin) are the cops and bystanders – a Greek chorus done up like the cast of Newsies – who display a suitably theatrical range of responses both comic and tragic. Furthermore, the exhibition title deceives – just as every photograph deceives – because it doesn’t tell the whole story. Included in this compact survey are classic images of Coney Island beach crowds and non-murderous drama along with the pulpy presses in which they appeared. If anything, photography was Weegee’s business and by the looks of his apartment, that’s all he did. 
Weegee, installation view of Weegee: Murder is My Business at the Photo League, New York, 1941, gelatin silver print
However again, it wasn’t all he did and herein lies another layer of artifice and the appeal he continues to have for filmmakers (from The Naked City in 1948 through to Nightcrawler in 2014), photographers (such as Stan Douglas), and assorted gutter tourists. The man himself realized his work’s potential and hooked up with the Photo League, a group of documentary photographers dedicated to representing the unacknowledged parts of the city, to exhibit his images in a gallery context. His displays at their space look like a high school civics projects gone wrong, but they provide the final piece of the puzzle that remains of the man with one name who turned his eye on the night and taught us to look at ourselves with voyeuristic glee.
Ryerson Image Centre: http://ryerson.ca/ric/index.html
Weegee: Murder is My Business continues to December 13.
Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, Azure, and The Globe and Mail. He is the editor of Akimblog. You can follow his quickie reviews and art news announcements on Twitter @TerenceDick.
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Weegee at the Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto
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