Oct 31 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2684 -

Sale 2684 - Lot 140

Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
WEEGEE [ARTHUR FELLIG] (1899-1968)
Fire Rescue, New York. Circa 1940; printed 1960s.
Silver print, the image measuring 13⅜x10½ inches (34x26.7 cm.), the sheet slightly larger, with Weegee's 451 West 47th Street and Credit Weegee the Famous stamps on verso.

This photograph by Weegee was published on the front page of New York's daily PM newspaper in March 1941, after a fire tore through a lower East Side tenement building on a cold New York night, sending some 50 families fleeing onto the street below. As with most Weegee photographs, the identities of the man, the child and the firefighter in the picture are unknown. But in his 1946 book Naked City, Weegee accompanied the photo with this caption: "This man was lucky ... he hadn't gone to bed as yet ... but the rooms got full of smoke ... the lights went out ... so he grabbed his kid ... without tying the kid's shoelaces ... and ran for his life. He is surprised to find me there with my camera. He must wonder if my studio is on the fire engine ... and if I sleep in the Fire House."

Provenance
Purchased from a private dealer in 2002; to the Present Owner

Publication
Fellig, Arthur (Weegee), Weegee's Naked City (Da Capo Press, New York) 1975, p. 80
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