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), 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), Graffiti-NYC Tags, Urban Landscape

“Up against the wall mutha fukka” 1990

When I took this picture in Riverside park they had finally painted the handball court’s wall. It had been covered with vintage graffiti by the local legends Barbara & Eva 62 who I’m guessing came from the Amsterdam projects just a few blocks away. There had even been a few Sharks & Jets tags from the 1960’s which were paying homage to the movie “West Side Story” Oh well…

Then I met this guy Frank, who was Irish and had bright Orange hair. He hung around the 79th Street boat basin with a couple of old-timers. They were gay and Frank was 66 years old. I always do the math in my head to know how old someone was in 1945 in order to surmise whether or not they might have served in World War II. I asked him where and what he did during the war. He said he was on the USS Missouri which fought in the Pacific. He had to load the sixteen inch guns and described handling these giant cartridges of gunpowder, knowing that if there ever was a problem, he’d be dead before he knew what hit him. When I heard he had died of AIDS soon thereafter, there was something very unsettling about a guy who’d risked everything for our country just withering away prematurely…

All Photos © Matt Weber