If it bleeds...

On Weegee, the photojournalist known in particular for his crime photography:

Weegee knew that everything becomes theater in the tabloid press. He captioned his images to fit the dramas. “Balcony Seats at a Murder” presents a long shot of two buildings with their residents huddled on the fire escapes and open windows looking down as long-coated police detectives stand around the entrance to the “Italian Café” in Little Italy. The entrance is blocked by the body of man, his legs stretched onto the sidewalk, half hidden from view.

Consider the most famous of these spectator images, “Their First Murder.” Captured in 1941, the photograph presents a closely framed group of school children pushing and pulling against each other, looking off to the body of Peter Mancuso, gunned down on the sidewalk as he was walking with a newspaper. But we don’t see Peter. We only see the reactions. The faces range from the anguish of the victim’s aunt in the center, to utter glee on the face of a blond boy on the left, to confused concern by two boys in the back. But it’s the girl in the foreground, staring up with knitted brows and projecting a look of concern and contemplation, that unsettles us. Weegee’s photographs often contain someone in the crowd staring back at him — back at us — and reminding us that these photographs are more about the act of looking than the subject we are looking at.