I took this a week after the Rodney King riot in LA…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Harlem 1988
All Photos © Matt Weber
Harlem 1985
All Photos © Matt Weber
Harlem 1987
All Photos © Matt Weber
“Working the Night Shift” 1988
For twelve years of my life, the Checker Cab was my nemesis. People who were about to get into my cab would invariably change their mind at the last second, when they heard the Checker’s horn gently beckoning. Nostalgia Kills…
All Photos © Matt Weber
“Turbo Yuppies” 1988
I am using twenty year old titles because they had some relevance when I titled them and I suppose that the original impetus to title an image still has some significance, when looking at it many years later. After all, everything changes in New York, and the last yuppie was seen on September 10th 2001…After that we all became just New Yorkers again…
Right? Or is that just wishful thinking?
All Photos © Matt Weber
“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
‘Higher Goals” Harlem 1986
This was a large display of art with the message to the kids of Harlem, that you should have ‘Higher Goals” than the NBA…because that’s never gonna happen, you can’t be like Mike…so stay in school!
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
St. Marks Place 1988
I forget the artist’s name but he had adorned quite a few walls in the East village with his unique style murals…
All Photos © Matt Weber
“The Picnic’s Over” Red Hook 1990
When it rains, it pours! I think that this was the hardest rain I ever found myself in. If you look really close, you’ll notice that there’s a wet Chihuahua in one of the girl’s arms…
All Photos © Matt Weber
“The Quiet Zone” 1989
For years this image was my standard wedding gift. I was still driving a taxi when I took this picture. They were my fare, and as they walked into Central Park, I took what has always been a well received image…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Broadway Nap 1989
Sometimes it’s amazing that I can remember such details from so long ago, but I remember discussing this image with a stranger on 113th Street when I took this picture. I had to convince him that it was OK and finally he realized that the couple was probably in love and then it passed his smell test. I have had so many discussions about whether or not it’s OK to photograph homeless people, and it’s one of those things that varies from person to person. Some, insist that if you don’t volunteer to work at a soup kitchen then it’s unconscionable. Me, I have definitely pondered it quite a bit, but I eventually figured that if my life’s calling is to photograph New York City, then I can’t ignore the least fortunate, nor should I make them the primary focus…They do exist and I sometimes I take their picture…
“They Are in Peace” 1996
All Photos © Matt Weber
“The Shape of Things to Come” 1989
I thought the poster was foreboding as all the money in the world wouldn’t vanquish the homeless people who had littered the streets of Manhattan twenty years ago. I didn’t consider that a mayor would come along and sweep them away like cockroaches…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Frankie 1986
Frankie was living in the old abandoned trolley ticket booth on the entance to the Queensboro bridge when I took this picture. No one could ever believe that Frankie was only 56 years old, but I guess subsiding on hard liquor with almost no food could age one this much…
All Photos © Matt Weber
“The Urban Prisoner” 1988
I was cruising St. Marks Place one day when I snapped this picture. The print came out very nice and I titled it “The Urban Prisoner”…Sixteen years later a book with the same name was published…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Harlem 1986
I remember thinking that there might be something here, because while Malcolm X appears behind these guys, almost calling them into action, they were just chilling and mixing screwdrivers on another dreary day on the street…
All Photos © Matt Weber
The Empire State Building 1988
It was hot and hazy and I remember stopping on the Pulaski bridge in Greenpoint and taking a few snaps of my favorite building with my trusty Canon AE-1 Program…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Central Park’s Bow Bridge 1993
All Photos © Matt Weber
San Francisco at Dawn 1992
Having driven across country over the course of a week or so, there was something akin to reaching the top of a mountain, when I finally reached the Pacific…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Black and White Street Photographs of New York City by Matt Weber 