Although ICP has 20,000 Weegee prints in its archive, the great Arthur Fellig was a master photographer of low life, a great depicter of drunks, crooks, B-starlets and the seamier side of life in general. Particularly noteworthy and haunting are images such as "DRUNKS arrested M-20 on Bowery": in his own handwriting written hastily below the image, the child-like scrawl and cross-outs underscore what a marvelous chronicler of human life Weegee was. So busy shooting and cataloguing his images of urban life and its underpinnings, writing this caption perhaps was an afterthought, or at least something for which there was little time or consideration.
"Slumber-time in a mission...it's Christmas" (circa 1942) also brilliantly captures the essence of Weegee's oeuvre: A disheveled man asleep on the floor, hat and shoes aside his head. The man sleeps on the New York World Telegram newspaper, the headline of which screams "YANK FLIERS BLAST REICH," a sharp contrast to the astounding crispness of the tinsel on the Christmas tree in the background. And the casual observer, filled with pity for the man, must also wonder: was this somehow posed? Several prints in the series "Three Women Trampled to Death in Excursion-Ship Stampede" (1941) capture the horrific scene, the grief, the grisliness of the event, as does the infamous event at Luna Park in Coney Island “Fire Destroys the ‘World’s Largest Railway’ at Coney Island,” (1944). Seeing this show—a psycho here, a dead body there, men sleeping in doorways, assorted accidents, and a framed check from Time Inc. for "TWO MURDERS - $35"—one is constantly reminded that the beat photographer's footsteps are quite enormous and impossible to follow in. Perhaps only Berenice Abbott and Helen Levitt came anywhere close to chronicling New York life of decades ago as did Weegee.

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