Matt Weber (Street photography), Color, Coney Island, Kids & Teens, Women of New York

“I wanna be like Mike”

Mike Peters has just wrapped up a digital presentation of his work called “The Dream” It will hopefully find a publisher soon. He hopes to print four narrow books and then put them into a slipcase. That would be fantastic! I have decided to crop my work from now on as a tribute to Mike, who lugs his Hasselblad around everywhere and makes me wish that I had one too. I remember what it feels like to compose an image with a larger camera and then attain critical focus. You just sense the potential of the image in a different way than with 35 mm. Of course I’m sort of kidding here, but another thing which Mike has, that I covet is…Four cars! I just want one…

All Photos © Matt Weber

Matt Weber (Street photography), Kids & Teens, Old New York

NYC 1989

The Amsterdam projects were among NYC’s first. I’m pretty sure Robert Moses had a hand in their coming about. Built in 1947 they were a partial answer to all the troops that had come home after the war and needed affordable housing. I think they may have been better off leaving the tenements alone, because the projects eventually became isolated neighborhoods within a neighborhood. To this day, you have people who barely leave the projects to shop and it creates a weird type of personality disorder. Just knowing that your entire existence is based on government handouts could make the people feel a bit depressed as the affluent flutter about the perimeter. Rich people walking their kids to private school, pass the projects full of welfare recipients and crack dealers, who glare back unhappily. I know that some people will use the cheap rent to launch a better life for themselves, but most will spend all their days in these experiments from the laboratory of Moses and his minions…

One last gripe about NYC’s housing projects…If they had just put in larger windows, these buildings wouldn’t resemble the virtual prisons which they are. A little more light could have made a difference…

All Photos © Matt Weber