A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

The camera does not lie, people used to say, before they knew better. Arthur Fellig, the Austrian-born photojournalist who clawed his way to New York notoriety in the 1930s and '40s under the name Weegee, liked to dispense that bunkum too. Here, Gurewitsch presents some facts behind Weegee's The Critic, a shot on the opening night of the opera season on Nov 22, 1943, and first published in Life magazine. The shot is now on view in an exhibition of Weegee's work at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.