You know that magazine ad that says ''We get closer''? If only they had known Weegee.

Weegee (1899-1968) got close to crooks, corpses and kids. He climbed into paddy wagons to photograph the passengers, and crouched on the sidewalk where blood had been spilled. He popped a flash in the stunned faces of accident survivors. He photographed lovers and sleepers on the sly. He crowded the mike when the fat lady sang.

Weegee was the ultimate news photographer in a newspaper career that ran roughly from 1935 to 1946. At home on the seamy side, he photographed New York with the sure instinct of a tabloid maven. His city was a string of frightening events punctuating the necessary and sometimes boisterous rounds of courtship, socializing, rest and entertainment.

He despised the rich and was comfortable with the poor, having been, and usually being, poor himself, but he apparently loved those short of cash mainly when they were eccentrically photographic. He was always happy to snap someone down at the heel, drunk, fat or foolish -- anyone a little exaggerated. He came across as exaggerated himself without half trying, and he tried hard, trading on his unwashed, unshaven, brash persona to build up a reputation as Weegee the Famous.

''Weegee's World: Life, Death and the Human Drama,'' an enormous show of 329 photographs, opens today at the International Center of Photography Midtown. Weegee's archives of approximately 16,000 photographs and 7,000 negatives were given to the center in 1993; the exhibition material comes entirely from this collection. The largest show ever devoted to this photographer, it includes many images never seen before or unseen for half a century, as well as some films by and about Weegee. The exhibition coincides with the publication of ''Weegee's World'' (Bulfinch) by Miles Barth, curator of the archives and collections at the center and of the show.