Matt Weber (Street photography), The Urban Prisoner, Urban Landscape

“Incoming” 1989

When I took this picture and named it “Incoming” for obvious reasons, I never expected it to become prophetic. If I do an exhibit, the temptation to place this image before the pictures I took on 9/11 is fairly strong. I don’t know if I want to post my pictures of the massacre. I realize that they are the most historically significant pictures I am likely to take. There’s something very strange about fielding compliments about pictures that had such terrible content. I have had to print certain images from that day, and stuck alone in my darkroom, I sometimes get overwhelmed.

I lost a close friend because of September 11th. He thought that we got what we deserved that day. I am well aware of our country’s past and I am very ashamed of certain parts of our history, but…

September 11th was not a MILITARY battle ending in victory for the demented “jihaders”, it was a fuckin’ massacre, plain and simple…

All Photos © Matt Weber

Matt Weber (Street photography), homeless, The Urban Prisoner

Shadowman 1989

Probably one of the best examples I could ever come up with, to prove that life, can provide the most amazing things to photograph. I was barely awake at 5 am after a long shift in my taxi, when I spotted this guy playing with his shadows. In a million years I would never expect to have seen this guy with the two fat black stripes on his back, doing this between two fat black stripes on a wall in lower Manhattan…I don’t mean that I could never conjure up something good on my own, but the happenstance of life has a way of providing gifts when you least expect it…

All Photos © Matt Weber

Matt Weber (Street photography), Portraits, Women of New York

Linda 1996

Linda had had a hard life…She would be the first to admit that she made some bad choices along the way. Once upon a time, she was a nice little Jewish girl like any other kid. Then the street took a toll on her in a big way. Her family gave up on her and she was homeless for many years. Recently a social worker got her on her feet again and she has a little cottage in rural New Jersey. She misses all the people she knew in New york, but also knows that the old “monkey on her back” might become a problem if she spends to much time haunting these streets again…

All Photos © Matt Weber

Matt Weber (Street photography), Harlem, signs, Urban Wildlife

“No Lottering on Stopp” Harlem 1987

Literacy was one way to tell the economic status of a given neighborhood. For years Harlem’s schools had been left behind in terms of funding, but recently some of the better charter schools have been established in Harlem and other poorer neighborhoods. I wonder what it would be like to look at the headlines on the Daily News and see indecipherable characters. It must be very depressing. The things we take for granted…

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…