One of my favorite subway portraits…
All Photos © Matt Weber
“September 25th 2001”
This is a picture of my daughter when she was born about 8 1/2 years ago. I am not quite sure that my daughter likes this photograph, but I’m posting it anyway.
All Photos © Matt Weber
“Baby Phat” 2005
This is what my daughter said ” I was real chubby-wubby in that bathing suit. Oh yeah little me you should know that it is very rude to point at some one.”
All Photos © Matt Weber
Jessica 2006
Jessica lived across the street from me, if you consider sleeping in a cardboard box, living. She was a teenage crack addict and the stainless steel of the the subway was probably the closest thing to a mirror she had. The last time I saw her she was being arrested on Broadway and it seemed that she had been caught shoplifting. Hopefully she has found some help and made a comeback, but she was in a really bad way…
All Photos © Matt Weber
NYC 2009
I might as well put the bus pictures in a little group since I don’t have enough of them to start a new category…(OK…I did add the bus pictures to the car category)
All Photos © Matt Weber
“Egg Breaker” 2004
This is my daughter after she broke a carton of eggs. One day she will break a lot more than eggs…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Starbucks 2010
Why must I be a teenager in love?
All Photos © Matt Weber
“The Garden” 2003
I guess the most common reaction to this picture is that it could have been taken during any era. The kid sitting in the foreground is my daughter. In 21st century New York it’s difficult to make a “timeless” image. Once again, this is an old scan from a print and one day I’ll upgrade it, but not now…
All Photos © Matt Weber
“Flower Child” 2007
It seems that my shadow is holding her shadow’s hand. Total luck…
All Photos © Matt Weber
“Boys & Girls” 2004
Another scan from a print which I’ll eventually upgrade. This is a picture that I like very much and rather than try and explain why, I’ll shut up…
All Photos © Matt Weber
“The City Game” 2007
The kid on the left is doing his Walt Frazier imitation and of course probably doesn’t know who Clyde was. On the right, another kid’s just gone “All Net” or what’s left of the net. I think this could be one of my better photographs…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Harlem 1988
Good times, bad times, uptown back in the late 1980s…I always say that kids were quite capable of keeping themselves busy with just a few bottle caps, a piece of chalk, or a 19¢ Spaldeen…(used for stickball, stoopball, punchball, and whatever else you could think of)
All Photos © Matt Weber
NYC 2009
All Photos © Matt Weber
NYC 2000
All Photos © Matt Weber
“The Pudding People” 1987
All Photos © Matt Weber
“Love is a Train”
A friend of a friend was kind enough to make a video of some of my subway pictures to a Willie Nile song:
“The Misfits” 1988
I came upon this crew just chilling on a stoop on St. Marks Place one afternoon. I think they were a fairly typical group of Lower East Side kids…Uptown, they would have stirred things up quite a bit…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Hotel Martinique 1988
The Martinique was a welfare hotel back in the ’80s and the kids would spill out into the streets. I should probably have spent some time shooting them, but I just stopped my cab, put on the blinkers and took several shots of these kids crawling up onto the phone booths. I’ve always been on the move and it’s now obvious that slowing down and staying put is a very good strategy, but the old cliche that you can’t teach an old dog, well you know what I mean…
This is a mediocre scan from an old print and will be rescanned one day, hopefully sooner than later.
All Photos © Matt Weber
Central Park 1988
This is one of those pictures which didn’t make the book, but it still reminds me of how dangerous Central Park was twenty some odd years ago. These toddlers were running towards the woods uptown where the famous jogger attack took place. Ah, the good old days…
All Photos © Matt Weber
“Playing Hooky on 42d Street” 1985
Cutting class and going down to “The Deuce” was a rite of passage for several generations of kids…I guess it’s better now since Times Sq. has been cleaned up, but there are some who would disagree…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Black & White 1986
Back in 1965 it could have been me on the left. Might have been my friend Albert Pickett on the right…
All Photos © Matt Weber
“The Quadruple Yoking” 1988
The Quadruple Yoking may be one of the worst titles of all time, but it will always be one of my favorite pictures…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Coney Island 2009
All Photos © Matt Weber
Black and White Street Photographs of New York City by Matt Weber 