Matt Weber (Street photography), Color, Coney Island, Kids & Teens, Women of New York

“I wanna be like Mike”

Mike Peters has just wrapped up a digital presentation of his work called “The Dream” It will hopefully find a publisher soon. He hopes to print four narrow books and then put them into a slipcase. That would be fantastic! I have decided to crop my work from now on as a tribute to Mike, who lugs his Hasselblad around everywhere and makes me wish that I had one too. I remember what it feels like to compose an image with a larger camera and then attain critical focus. You just sense the potential of the image in a different way than with 35 mm. Of course I’m sort of kidding here, but another thing which Mike has, that I covet is…Four cars! I just want one…

All Photos © Matt Weber

Matt Weber (Street photography), Kids & Teens, Old New York

NYC 1989

The Amsterdam projects were among NYC’s first. I’m pretty sure Robert Moses had a hand in their coming about. Built in 1947 they were a partial answer to all the troops that had come home after the war and needed affordable housing. I think they may have been better off leaving the tenements alone, because the projects eventually became isolated neighborhoods within a neighborhood. To this day, you have people who barely leave the projects to shop and it creates a weird type of personality disorder. Just knowing that your entire existence is based on government handouts could make the people feel a bit depressed as the affluent flutter about the perimeter. Rich people walking their kids to private school, pass the projects full of welfare recipients and crack dealers, who glare back unhappily. I know that some people will use the cheap rent to launch a better life for themselves, but most will spend all their days in these experiments from the laboratory of Moses and his minions…

One last gripe about NYC’s housing projects…If they had just put in larger windows, these buildings wouldn’t resemble the virtual prisons which they are. A little more light could have made a difference…

All Photos © Matt Weber

Matt Weber (Street photography), Kids & Teens, Old New York

“The City Game” 2005

If you’ve grown up in a city in the northeast, you remember what it’s like. Playing with someone else’s ball that’s worn so bad, strings are coming out of it. It’s cold out and you’re wearing a t-shirt and then someone lets a pass slip through their fingers. Now you have to wipe the yellow dog piss snow, or something a lot worse off the ball and you look for some newspaper. Fingers numb, starving, throat dry from no water fountains, you keep playing till all you have are those old greenish streetlights, barely making it possible, for you to know if you’ve hit your last jump shot…

All Photos © Matt Weber

Matt Weber (Street photography), Kids & Teens, Offspring

NYC 2008

I think this is a pretty decent photograph. I go out of my way to get a very talented guitarist to sing Happy Birthday to my daughter, and he’s rocking his butt off, but my kid is much more concerned with what her friends are doing. It could have been Jimi Hendrix and she would still say “who cares, he’s boring daddy”…

All Photos © Matt Weber

Matt Weber Kids & Teens, Subway

NYC 2010

Hey who am I to judge this kid’s style. If he wants his pants to fall down so we can see his boxer’s or wear his sneakers without laces it’s cool. 18 karat gold mouth, probably not the best thing in the long run, but once again, I’ll reserve judgement for the time being, cause I remember when letting one’s hair grow past his shoulder was radical. The only thing that sucks, is the gang shit which has these teens choosing Blood vs. Crip  when they’re still in junior high. I think the wrong color bandanna can get a kid killed these days. When we were kids we just listened to the Grateful Dead, instead of feeling Grateful not to be dead!

All Photos © Matt Weber

Matt Weber (Street photography), Kids & Teens, Urban Landscape

Amsterdam Ave. 1988

I’m happy to post all of my pictures on the internet, knowing that some will be stolen. I can’t worry about what I don’t know about or can’t control. I refuse to become paranoid and only post tiny watermarked images. I don’t care if you use thirty of my pictures in a collage. I actually think it might make me happy to see the results. What you should NOT do is steal the images for a commercial project. My images can be purchased for very reasonable prices, and it would make sense to spend a small amount up front. I am being sued for every penny I don’t have in a divorce, and I will litigate to protect my work…I’m bringing this up because this image has been made into T-shirts in the past and is an example of one of my most commercially viable pictures…

All Photos © Matt Weber

Matt Weber (Street photography), 9/11 Related, Kids & Teens

September 11th 2001

When I was fourteen I took the test for Stuyvesant high school and actually passed. I took the easy way out and went to Music & Art because I knew the academic demands would be much less. These kids were most likely from “Stuy” and I can’t blame them for being happy. At that age it’s possible to be happy under almost any circumstances. As you get older I think every bad bit of bad news, whether it be political or just another senseless bombing in the middle east, has a way of getting under your skin. The advice I often get is “If you can’t change it, don’t worry about it” If everyone felt that way, nothing would get done. I don’t know how I would have reacted to 9/11 when I was fifteen. I might have been like all the “tough guys” who wanted to “Nuke ’em All”.  I’m proud that I haven’t become a conservative guy in my old age. It’s so easy to do…

All Photos © Matt Weber