SP is wherever you happen to be photography, shot with any lens or film and done without disturbing the pictures content.
Maybe I should have snatched the kitten right off her shoulder, but I didn’t and I guess I fucked up. I did have a big orange cat named Poober who didn’t like other cats, but I still didn’t like leaving this little Poober clinging on for dear life…Add this to a list of things I should have done…
All Photos © Matt Weber
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…
I remember thinking how back in the 1930’s when the Bowery was a place were you could get a bed for 15¢ and a pastrami sandwich for 20¢ this would never happen. If you fell asleep with 40¢ in your hand, you woke up empty handed!
All Photos © Matt Weber
Indian Joe who can be found in the “Homeless” category had just gotten into it with another fellow on St. Marks Place and showed me his freshly injured hand…
All Photos © Matt Weber
This a scan from an old print and I hope to rescan it soon. This is a picture which for some reason jumped out at me when I found it in an old folder…I think this was taken on the lower east side…
All Photos © Matt Weber
These stray dogs were acting like alley cats when I saw them up on this abandoned building’s ledge in Harlem…
All Photos © Matt Weber
I was cruising Pelham Parkway in the Bronx when I saw these poor horses in their prison cells. I feel like horses are the last animal I want to see confined to a tiny cubicle, cause they have always represented freedom to me as much as any eagle…Of course I know nothing about horses and they may feel much safer in their tiny rooms…
All Photos © Matt Weber
All Photos © Matt Weber
I changed my mind…Maybe it wasn’t a sacrifice…Maybe rats or stray cats ate the bird raw…I know that there were quite a few Santeria sacrifices going on in the outer boroughs back then, but I’ll give the homeless people who lived in the tunnel the benefit of the doubt…I wasn’t there
All Photos © Matt Weber
Lots of old Europeans in my neighborhood. The upper west side was where many of those who were displaced by WW II ended up. The prewar buildings had wonderful large and affordable apartments and there were TWO subway lines to help get you downtown in a jiffy…
All Photos © Matt Weber
All Photos © Matt Weber
All Photos © Matt Weber
A bored prostitute waits patiently for a client during the day shift, which I imagine wasn’t quite as active as the nights…My favorite building stood tall in the background.
All Photos © Matt Weber
All Photos © Matt Weber
I was shooting up the FDR late one day around dusk when I spotted a small phalanx of vintage limos cruising ahead 0f me. I lingered until my favorite building appeared momentarily, and then I snapped this picture at 55 MPH…
All Photos © Matt Weber
I took this a week after the Rodney King riot in LA…
All Photos © Matt Weber
All Photos © Matt Weber
All Photos © Matt Weber
All Photos © Matt Weber
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
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
All Photos © Matt Weber
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
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
Black and White Street Photographs of New York City by Matt Weber 