For President: 12 Strange and Funny Distorted Photographic Portraits of ’60s Politicians Made by Weegee

Weegee’s last major project was caricatures, distorted photographic portraits, of politicians. Weegee’s energies were focused primarily, although not exclusively, no politician or public figure was safe from Weegee’s darkroom antics, on the 1968 U.S. presidential elections.

Many people have wondered wistfully, what-in-the-world would Weegee make today with the current presidential candidates (and perhaps Photoshop). Some of these photos were exhibited and published, perhaps most significantly, and perhaps slightly psychedelically, in See magazine in October 1968:

“I take pictures with my third eye – the inner eye that sees what lies beneath the surface of the subject. What some call a pictorial distortion may, in truth, be the reality. And what we call reality may be a distortion of the truth.” – Weegee

Hubert H. Humphrey, ca. 1968

Bobby Kennedy, ca. 1968

Jackie Kennedy, ca. 1963

Eugene McCarthy, ca. 1968

Draft Johnson for President, ca. 1968

Lyndon Baines Johnson (distortion), ca. 1965-68

Pres. Johnson, ca. 1965-68

Pres. Johnson, ca. 1965-68

For President, Nixon, ca. 1961

For President, Reagan, ca. 1968

For President, Rockefeller, ca. 1966

For President, Wallace, ca. 1968

(Photos © Getty Images / International Center of Photography, via Fans in a Flashbulb)