Additional information
by Matt Weber (Photographer), Matt Weber (Author), Eric Haze (Preface by)
Eric Haze: Nobody has captured the nuances of New York City better than Matt Weber, with an unerringly honest eye for the human experience and the spaces that frame it. Always living in the moment, Matt's focus ranges from the empty, lonely streets of a sleeping city to tender, intimate moments caught in the air, as well as private and public rage exposed in the myriad of ways that such close proximity to each can breed.
1985 is classic Weber. Capturing New York without pretense, and with love and attention to the small yet extremely significant moments in a city that never sleeps.
Matt Weber has been shooting the streets of New York for the past 40 years, many of his images taken while running fares in his New York City taxi cab. His camera captures New York without pretense and with the love and attention that only a native could afford. Each image documenting the small yet extremely significant moments in the life of a city that never sleeps. 1985 is a compellingly curated collection of colour images from a decade of incomparable change, both gritty and intimidating. An authentic look at daily life from someone who has consistently been 'in the right place, at the right time'. His images are both timely and timeless and tell the stories of real life in the Big Apple in unfiltered and honest detail.
Author Biography
Matt Weber was born in New York City in1958 and studied oil painting with Nicolai Abracheff, one of Picasso's
contemporaries as well as a noted cubist. Weber attended Music and Art High
School but dropped out to pursue 'art' on New York's subways. Completely
self-taught in photography, Weber studied all three books by Ansel Adams: 'The
Print', 'The Negative' and 'The Camera'. Weber only started taking photos of
the NYC streets in 1984 while driving his Yellow Taxi Cab, inspired by the
sheer intensity of the things, places and people he would see at night. This
newfound passion ultimately turned him from a cabdriver with a camera to a
photographer with a taxi. His monograph, 'The Urban Prisolner' was published by
Sanctuary books in 2004. Street Trip New York City was published in 2017 by
Carpet Bombing Culture. His work has also appeared in the publications 'Popular
Photography', 'Photographica' and 'Hamburger Eyes' amongst many others. Weber
has had solo exhibitions at the now defunct jan van der donk gallery in Chelsea
(2004) and The Peninsula Arts Center in Newport News in 2005. He has been
represented by Harper Levine of East Hampton New York since 2007 and several of
his prints are homed in the collections of Todd Oldham, Harper Levine and
Richard Prince. More on Weber's work and biography can be seen in the 2012
documentary "More than the Rainbow".
