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Street photographer Ryan Weideman drove a New York City cab for decades. With one eye on the road and a camera in his hand, every passenger became a story, every trip a wild ride.
Street photographer Ryan Weideman drove a New York City cab for decades. With one eye on the road and a camera in his hand, every passenger became a story, every trip a wild ride.
Back in 1978, while living in Oakland, photographer Ryan Weideman saw Midnight Express, a nerve-wracking film that tells the true story of Billy Hayes – a young American who, after being caught smuggling hashish, escapes from a Turkish jail and lives to tell the tale.
“I thought, ‘If this guy can go through that, I am ready for New York!” Weideman says with a laugh.
Although Weideman had taken visual cues from film noir throughout his life, it was the work of photographers William Klein, Diane Arbus, Joel Meyerowitz and Robert Frank that made him aware that something spectacular was happening in New York.
After living with a friend for the first month and a half, Weideman found a 200-square-foot apartment in Times Square when ‘The Deuce’, as it was nicknamed, was home to pushers and prostitutes, sex palaces and porn theatres, hustlers and three-card monte dealers.
Weideman was unsure of how he’d pay the rent until his neighbour, a cab driver, took him on a ride one night. He was instantly hooked and quickly started working the nightshift: from 5pm to 5am.
“I drove a Checker cab but I usually got the wrecks because I only drove three or four nights a week,” he remembers wistfully. “I spent the rest of the time in my darkroom, printing and developing film.”
The quintessential New York cabbie, with a wisecracking mouth and lead foot on the gas pedal, Weideman carefully covered the first three letters of his license so that only the letters ‘DEMAN’ were visible.
When passengers entered the cab, he would proudly announce, “You’re riding with the Street Demon.”
Although the 12-hour shifts were gruelling, he never drank coffee or took drugs.
Although the 12-hour shifts were gruelling, he never drank coffee or took drugs.
It all began about a week after he first started driving nights, when a Puerto Rican gentleman got into his cab one evening. “He had this small, stingy brim hat, a pencil moustache, and a suit and tie,” says Weideman.
“I was kind of nervous at first because I was thrilled and taken aback by his presence and his look. I turned around and asked him – I was a bit hesitant – if I could photograph him and he said, ‘Yes.’
“From that moment, I knew that it was out there. I could feel it. This is where I wanted to be. I used to call my shift, ‘The Weegee Hours of the Morning.’ That’s when things would really start to pop,” he says, laughing as he recalls stories that span three decades of New York.
