Leigh Wiener
| Leigh A. Wiener | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
August 25, 1929 New York, New York |
| Died | May 11, 1993 (aged 63) Los Angeles, California |
| Occupation | Photographer, Photojournalist |
| Nationality | American |
| Notable awards | Emmy Award |
| Children | Devik H. Wiener |
| Website | |
| www |
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Leigh Austen Wiener (August 25, 1929 - May 11, 1993) was an award-winning American photographer and photojournalist. In a career that spanned five decades, he covered hundreds of people and events. His images captured the public and private moments of entertainers, musicians, artists, authors, poets, scientists, sports figures, politicians, industrialists, and heads of state, including every U.S. president from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan and illustrated every sector of industry including farming, steel mills, auto manufacturing, aerospace, medicine, research, early computing and semi-conductor manufacturing.
Leigh A. Wiener was born in New York City to Grace and Willard Wiener. Wiener’s lifelong love of cameras and photography began at an early age. Willard Wiener was a newspaper man who frequently brought family friend and colleague Arthur Fellig—the news photographer better known as Weegee—to the house for Sunday dinner. Felig always had a packet of his latest pictures with him which he would lay out, asking a young Leigh for his opinion. By the age of 14, Wiener sold his first commercial photograph to Collier’s Weekly.
In 1946, he moved to Los Angeles. While attending UCLA, where he majored in Political Science, Wiener also worked as a news photographer for The Los Angeles Times. After college, he joined the Times as a staff photographer, but his years there were interrupted by military service in Europe as an Army photographer for Stars and Stripes.
On April 8, 1949 in San Marino, California, three-year-old Kathy Fiscus, while playing in a field with three other children, fell down an abandoned well, only fourteen inches wide, and became wedged ninety-seven feet below the ground.
Arriving on the scene, Wiener came upon hundreds of other newspeople, photographers, and television crews. Believing there was little else at the scene that could be photographed, Wiener left the field and walked to the Fiscus home. There in the rear yard, using his 4x5 Speed Graphic, he photographed the child’s empty swing.
Returning to the scene, Wiener waited along with everyone else. Despite the efforts of the rescue teams to reach her, Kathy’s lifeless body was brought up two days later. Subsequently, Wiener’s powerful photograph of the child’s empty swing was used on the front page of over 150 newspapers nationwide.
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