Frank Pape, Arrested for Homicide

Weegee

1944 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

The subject of this photograph, a sixteen-year-old boy, confessed to tying up and strangling four-year-old William Drach in the Bronx on October 29, 1944, allegedly mimicking what he had seen in a movie. Here, Weegee adapts the traditional tropes of portraiture, in which the sitter’s hands and facial features are of the utmost importance, to present a caged criminal still armed with his weapons. Exploiting the cramped quarters of the police van, Weegee frames the boy’s placid face within the crisscross of the chain-linked fence. The boy’s hands—the presumed tools of his crime—are eerily dismembered from his body.

Artist

Weegee

Date

1944

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Anonymous Gift, 2005