Matt Weber (Street photography), Cars & Buses, Old New York

“Downtown” 1989

Hey, this picture might work well on the cover of an LP but CD’s have replaced them years ago. Wait a minute, MP3s are the, no make that MP4s are the format…Maybe I could crop the image a little more from each side and put it on the cover of a book, but Amazon has changed the game with their Kindle, and books are suddenly selling less than their digital counterparts. I guess I could reformat it for the I-Pad, but how long do you think that will be the rage?

How about an “Archival Pigment Print” created by a master of the art of Zhee-Clay printing?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Street Photography © Matt Weber

 

 

Matt Weber (Street photography), Uncategorized, Urban Landscape

“The Coffee Stain Poet” 2010

You may wonder how rare a “Coffee Stain Human” is and the answer is, very rare. In twenty five years I’ve only encountered four of them. Do they matter? Do Siskind’s paint splotches matter? Try finding human coffee stains. This one may be the best of all, as he’s a struggling poet, with a cup of coffee in one hand, and his trusty #2 pencil in the other. He’s frantically scribbling haiku before the next rain comes and washes him away…

Street Photography © Matt Weber

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

West 42d Street 1988

Anyone who lived in New York back in the 1980s remembers this giant painting of “The Doctor”. Yes, the ’80s were a time when the Mets ruled New York. Many younger fans jumped aboard and I can’t blame them. The Yankees were suffering from Steinbrenner’s miserly years, when he colluded with other owners and tried to halt the giving out of huge contracts, which of course was his doing in the first place. Meanwhile the Mets had the two best young players in the game…Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden. As a Yankee fan I had to concede that the Mets were better. This trivial nonsense matters little to most people, but to diehard baseball fans, it was torture! I think Kevin Walsh of Forgotten New York will appreciate this photograph or at least I hope so. The Wilpon /Madoff fiasco is making it rather hard to be a Met fan these days. Maybe the young stockbroker who bought into the Mets will turn out to be their knight in shining armor…

Street Photography © Matt Weber

Matt Weber (Street photography), Graffiti-NYC Tags, Women of New York

Hip Hop: A Cultural Odyssey

There’s a gigantic book available on the History of Hip Hop. The gatefold is a beautiful painting by Mike Thompson and as you can see, a photo I took of Lady Pink was a model. I am happy to have my pictures used in this coffee table book. The book is called Hip Hop a Cultural Odyssey  and it is huge and printed on the heaviest paper I’ve ever seen used. This is probably the most comprehensive book on Hip Hop ever published and I’m recommending it highly!

All Photos © Matt Weber

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

Riverside Park 2011

When I took this picture in Riverside Park, I had just finished smoking a small but succulent cigar with my friend Dave Beckerman, a talented photographer, who had recently given up smoking cigarettes. When I was a teenager like these kids, I would have to keep my eyes peeled for cops, if I were to smoke something. As of today, mayor Bloomberg has imposed a new anti-smoking law which many feel is unfair, and others are celebrating. I don’t want kids to start smoking cigarettes and cigars are too strong for most kids and most women. They are either loved or loathed by all. I haven’t done shit worth spouting about, but plenty of older men have been sitting on a park bench and enjoying their tobacco for decades. Many of them served in the second world war or Korea. Others Vietnam. Most have paid their dues one way or another, and deserve the pleasure of sitting in the park and puffing their stinky cigars and deadly cigarettes, while they read their newspapers. I think that if one occasionally smells a whiff of tobacco in the air, they will most probably be no worse for the wear. Now for the first time in decades, I will have to break the law if I want to smoke a cigar, and I don’t like it… Very few people like cigar smoke, so very few will feel a bit of concern for my plight. That’s cool. I may not deserve sympathy, but the oldtimers do…

All Photos © Matt Weber