Weegee

Known for: flashbulb crime and tabloid photography in New York

Born Usher Fellig in what is now Ukraine, Weegee worked the night beat in New York for decades, arriving at crime scenes and fires before the police through a combination of police-band radio and instinct. His flashbulb-lit photographs of murder victims, tenement fires, and bystanders were published in the tabloid press and later collected in Naked City (1945). He gave himself the name Weegee — a phonetic spelling of Ouija — in reference to his apparent ability to predict news events.