“The Perfect Photograph” by Jeff Ladd
Here is a far from perfect photo of Jeff Ladd’s “Perfect Photograph” This is an I-phone snap but you can see that I didn’t get all thrifty, because I sprung for an 8 ply archival mat board to house this masterpiece. Why is this perfect? I have made a big deal over this picture for a long time. To arrange SEVEN people in perfect position is almost impossible. Throw in the energy between the two girls in the middle and voila, you have a work of art! If you think it’s easy, look around at your photos, and see if this has happened to you. Now an amateur could take a picture like this with his or her Holga on the first day of use…But a master photographer could also take hundreds of excellent photographs and still never take one this perfect…Jeff is very humble when I tease him about this picture. That’s a nice trait for sure, but Jeff also is doing something which may be even more important and certainly more beneficial for all of us other photographers. He is publishing out of print photo books which very few of us could hope to afford. He now has published a dozen very scarce and significant tiles with his company, Errata Editions…Check it out!
Motorcycle 1988
Finally, a new scan of an old favorite. I think that this image as scanned would fit on a sheet of 20×24″ paper very nicely. Maybe I should try and do that contrived bullshit, and print only five or ten of them and make a few shekels for a change…Buy one today before Gagosian buys out the entire run!
All Photos © Matt Weber
Columbus Ave. 2006
All of us “Eisenhower Babies” are getting old. Soon we’ll be like him. This guy probably served in WW II and now has to navigate through a gauntlet of punks just to go shopping. How do I know they are punks? Every third word that they utter is NIGGER. Most of them aren’t even black and it’s their favorite word by miles. I know that I didn’t grow up in Washington Heights where many of them live, but 40 years ago, this neighborhood wasn’t the yuppy filled place that is now. We knew enough about history not to throw around the “N” word…I’d hope that gangster culture as attractive as it for the young ones of today, gives way to a more peaceful and less angry attitude…
All Photos © Matt Weber




















