Getty Museum
U.S. Hotel at 263 Bowery
Creator
Weegee (Arthur Fellig)American Photographer · 1899–1968
All works by this person →As legend tells it, Arthur Fellig earned the nickname *Weegee* during his early career as a freelance press photographer in New York City. His apparent sixth sense for crime often led him to a scene well ahead of the police. Observers likened this sense, actually derived from tuning his radio to the police frequency, to the Ouija board, the popular fortune-telling game. Spelling it phonetically, F
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- negative about 1944; print about 1950
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
Weegee made this photograph at a cheap hotel, otherwise known as a flophouse, along the Bowery, New York's notorious skid row. In the first half of the 1900s, the Bowery's mile-long stretch of bars, missions, and hotels was home to an estimated 25,000 men. Weegee often photographed these down-and-out characters, and was probably doing so on the evening that he made this photograph. As the stairs recede toward the top of the image, each step appears narrower then the one below it--lending the words "U.S. Hotel" a powerful perspectival effect. The bold repetition of the hotel's name reveals Weegee's fascination with photography's graphic potential.
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