Matt Weber (Street photography), Color, Men of New York, Portraits

NYC 2009

As a novice when it comes to shooting color, I like this picture because the color is used sparingly. After a quarter century of just shooting without too much thought, this additional element (color) is challenging my last couple of brain cells. Normally I would have been pleased with all the rectangles and triangles in this picture, but the yellow helmet has added a focal point which wouldn’t have existed in black & white, and I guess it might even be…better? Ah, such confusion this has wrought on my soul…

All Photos © Matt Weber

Matt Weber (Street photography), Men of New York, Old New York

Lower East Side 1988

One of the things I liked about shooting in New York twenty years ago was, that the city was full of unrestored buildings. The old details were starting to show abundant wear and tear, but they were still completely authentic. Today, due to the real estate boom of the ’80s & ’90s most everything has been replaced. The new aluminum door from Home Depot or Anderson windows are a good thing as far as saving energy is concerned, but there was something nice about the fact that a hundred year old door had been opened and closed so many times. Old buildings may not have ghosts in them, but that old door may have been held open by a young James Cagney visiting a girl back in 1922 or…

All Photos © Matt Weber

Matt Weber (Street photography), Men of New York, Portraits, The Urban Prisoner

Herman R.I.P. 1995

All Photos © Matt Weber

This is how I want to remember Herman Markowitz. Smiling and being a sweet old man. When he was released from the concentration camp, he weighed less than ninety pounds. As you can see he was well built. He said he was a talented wrestler, and he was very strong into his seventies. In 1956 he moved into a 3d floor studio apartment on West 86th Street. His rent was $56 per month! When he died in 2007, his rent had climbed to $218 per month. He spent his working years in a factory in Jersey working a lathe and stamping metal pieces for who knows what. He had one close call with falling in love back in the sixties, but it didn’t work out. I should have taped our conversations. The stories he told me about being stuck in a Nazi work camp during the war, will fuck me up till the day I die…