Black and White Street Photographs of New York City by Matt Weber

Today is Henry Chalfant’s birthday. I took this picture twenty years ago on my old block. He is standing in front of the building which Robert Duvall use to live in. The thing is, even though Henry is the foremost expert on NYC grafitti, his expertise really started a few years after I had stopped writing. He was nice enough to pose next to this Joe-136 tag which meant a lot more to me, than it did to him! The tag was only visible after a hard long rain. Then it would appear magically like a Polaroid photo to remind me of 1971 when I would keep track of what was being written on those subway walls and tenement halls…