Matt Weber (Street photography), Graffiti-NYC Tags, Subway, Urban Landscape

Brooklyn 2007

In the not so distant future, I can see some guys sitting in a bar or on a stoop somewhere, having a very silly argument. Whoever wrote this lovely tag in etching fluid, will be boasting how he got up big time in ’05 and all of sudden a couple of older guys with potbellies and gray hair will walk over and say, “You guys ain’t shit” Those older guys will have been writers from the ’70s or ’80s who actually wrote on the outside of trains, in grafitti’s heyday..

A parallel could be made by comparing the Vietnam vets who came home and found themselves being told by guys twenty years older, that their war wasn’t shit compared to the “Real War” (WW II)

All Photos © Matt Weber

Matt Weber (Street photography), 9/11 Related, Men of New York, Portraits, Subway

Subway “9/11 Hero” 2005

There are all sorts of heroes in this world. There are the athletes that some of us root for as kids or even worse, still do as adults. Then there are the underpaid nurses who care for us when we get old, barely making ends meet, as they meet our rear ends with a towel…This fellow spent time at ground zero, and whether or not he had to deal with body parts, he surely had to breath those noxious fumes which lingered for several months. The smell of all the metal, plastics and who knows what burning, was so vile that breathing it on a daily basis, could make even the toughest people sick. His eyes seemed to have seen the worst of it, and I think he gave a lot more than most of us did after the terrible massacre on 9/11…making him a true hero.

All Photos © Matt Weber