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
“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
“Ground Zero” 1987
I named this picture “Ground Zero” when I took it, because the Empire State Building was Ground Zero in the 1964 classic film Fail Safe. I wish it still was…
All Photos © Matt Weber
“There are 8,000,000 Million Stories in The Naked City” 1985
I pulled over and took three or four shots and then drove away. I never went back…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Whorehouse / Hotel 1987
Yes, even the upper east side of Manhattan had a whorehouse back in the day.
All Photos © Matt Weber
Pawnshop Harlem 1986
Even some of the pawnshops went out of business during Harlem’s decline during the late twentieth Century…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Walker Evans & Robert Frank 1986
The Robert Frank part of this homage is very easy to figure out, while the Walker Evans half is a little trickier…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Columbus Circle 1987
A place where many things went down during the sixties is torn down to make way for a rather ugly building by William Zeckendorf at Columbus Circle…
All Photos © Matt Weber
“The Times Are a Changing” NYC 1987
They say change is the only constant and this holds true in New York as much as it does anywhere!
All Photos © Matt Weber
Shoe Repair 1986
Taxpayers were being raised almost daily during the 1980’s as the New York’s first big real estate boom since the post war days was underway…A lot of small businesses that had been around for a long time were gone…
All Photos © Matt Weber
“Flats To Let” South Bronx 1987
A sign from the previous century was still visible in this photograph taken when the South Bronx was at its worst…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Urban Prisons 1990
At one point New York had become so crime ridden that people actually turned their homes into jails…
All Photos © Matt Weber
New York 1988
The opening picture in “The Urban Prisoner” a monograph by Matt Weber published by Sanctuary Books in 2004
All Photos © Matt Weber
“All These Dying Days, I Walk The Ghost Town Used To Be My City” 1985
I never liked the World Trade Center when it stood tall, but ever since the massacre, I miss it all the time!
All Photos © Matt Weber
Harlem 1986
Harlem has always been a political hotbed, and hopefully will continue to be…Apathy sucks!
All Photos © Matt Weber
Black and White Street Photographs of New York City by Matt Weber 