Most photos: Matt Weber, Urban Prisoner. Matt’s having a GoFundMe, please read below.

It is tough to write an arts-related column while Minnesota is being attacked by a goon squad of ICE agents, many of whom have been fed propaganda for decades by Fox News, captured local media, podcast bros, and social media algorithms that are ruthless on our psyche at best and at worst co-opted by political actors and states.

It’s tough to even use the word tough for anything inconsequential right now.

I’m thinking about how Japanese photographers after WW2 reckoned with their art by rejecting the traditional, delicate, and balanced aesthetics in Japanese art. Blur, angles, dirt, grime, empty voids, searching but seeing nothing. Daido Moriyama eventually took these feelings to their logical end with his alluringly incomprehensible book, Farewell Photography, as the language of the Japanese Provoke Movement was being co-opted by the mainstream.

And don’t think this critique is just on the Republican side. I want to give credit to a portion of MAGA, as many good people are just stuck in a propagandistic information ecosystem, and they were the ones who understood that there was a global sex ring going on. Just, instead of in a pizza shop, it was coming from inside the House.

But there is just as much propaganda on the Democrat side; it’s just much more nuanced, which I say as my Sunset Park neighborhood is being suddenly inundated by Facebook ad money from our local representative, Dan Goldman’s campaign, who four years ago defeated a neighborhood favorite and progressive Yuh-Line Niou by 1,300 votes.

 

This happened for a multitude of reasons:

1. Republican judges in the state nuked the City’s redistricting maps at the last minute, electing a special master to upend the city races with an incomprehensible new map, forcing incumbents to run against each other and dividing the city in absurd ways. Our district became possibly the most contentious as the new map ridiculously connected our progressive and diverse neighborhood deep in Brooklyn with Wall Street, making the race the heart of the Progressive-Centrist battle in New York City.
2. This stratospheric change was timed to occur shortly before the elections, making it impossible for underfunded progressives to quickly coalesce around candidates in the shock of the changes.
3. This allowed the elections to be even more susceptible to money in politics. Federal prosecutor Dan Goldman entered the race, backed by his family’s Levi Strauss fortune, spending $7 million on his campaign, versus progressive candidates Carlina Rivera and Yuh-Line Niou, each attracting over $550,000 and splitting the progressive vote. (Watch the incredible photographer/artist Latoya Ruby Frasier protest the Levi Strauss company, *my favorite link in this article). The election was timed for the slowest point of the year in August, when many are on vacation, causing terrible turnout.
4. The New York Times flooded the airwaves in support of Goldman. Yet despite all these strikes against her, Yuh-Line Niou lost by only 1,300 votes. But the reality is that during a progressive wave election season, a career defining job was stolen from a fantastic Asian American woman.

Above: Brad Lander, who cut his chops winning the ruthless fight for the Prospect Park bike lane, speaks at the War on Cars book launch party in October. I was probably the only non city-biker in the room, as I’m too afraid to get hurt for my job. But being a tour guide, cars in the city threaten my safety daily, so it’s an issue I’m passionate about.

Mayor Mamdani has rightfully chosen Lander, currently the third most famous progressive in the city besides himself and AOC to run in the election. And if you have read the widely shared New York Times article insinuating that this was for anti-Israel or anti-semitic reasons, that is also fake news and propaganda.

In breaking the story, the New York Times wrote at the crux of the piece, “But other supporters who have spoken to him added that Mr. Mamdani, a sharp critic of Israel, was eager to unseat Mr. Goldman, whose views on the war in Gaza and other issues are well to his right.” Notice the comma placement.

If I was the editor, I would say this was a terribly clunky, unclear, and misleading use of commas, as structurally they are really saying, “But other supporters who have spoken to him added that Mr. Mamdani was eager to unseat Mr. Goldman. In addition, Mr. Mamdani is a sharp critic of Israel, whose views on the war in Gaza and other issues are well to Goldman’s right.” 

They should be in separate paragraphs frankly, as they’re not actually saying that the sources stated that Israel was the reason, even though it’s written to be perceived that way. These two independent sentences were deliberately entangled to mislead for political purposes, and I personally believe they do a grave injustice to the power of what antisemitism is, where it comes from, what it means, and how to fight it.

If you’re outraged at Citizens United and the money billionaires are using to push unfavorable Republican candidates through, you should be equally outraged at the mechanisms moving behind this race. Even if you like Goldman and think that he’s an exceptional prosecutor, as he seems to be. Mamdani is running Lander because it is an important, mostly progressive district, and I believe with this early progressive coalescence, a relatively straightforward win.

Matt Weber

Now, to end this bummer email with another one, NYC legend Matt Weber had a stroke a few months ago. I personally put his book Urban Prisoner over Bruce Davidson’s Subway in my collection, as I think Matt did an even better job depicting the New York of the ’70s-’90s than Davidson. (Although Davidson’s East 100th Street is possibly my favorite NYC photography book on my shelf.)

Matt is not one to ask for help, but there is a GoFundMe for him, which is necessary because our society treats artists and arts funding abysmally, forcing the most interesting and coolest New Yorkers and Matt’s daughter into horrible positions. I’m not sure I know anyone with the combination of kindness and honesty that Matt has. He is a character of characters of a person, and I mean that as the highest of compliments I can give, both as a person and as an artist. Please help out if you can.

I’ll end this by giving a preview of my next email. Thinking of Matt’s daughter at this time, I recall taking a semester off from college my junior year and living with my grandparents after my grandfather had a stroke, to watch him at night. My most vivid memory is of shaving him frequently, and I cherished the significant amount of time I got to spend together with them. I took photography classes at the ICP during the day, as I finally envisioned my ADHD escape from the U.S. educational system. A decade later I would have to do similar for my father, all while trying to weasel any type of artistic future in one of the most expensive cities in the world, as stress-related autoimmune weaknesses revealed themselves in me.

After my grandparents passed in the same year, cleaning out their stuff, I found my grandmother’s photography archive. I’ll save the rest of the story for next time and leave you with a few of her photos.

 

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