179th Street

In the winter of 1995–1996, I spent six months photographing inside the crack dens. These photographs were made in those rooms, alongside the people who lived there. Some of what’s here is difficult to look at. These three are all I’ll show. The rest went too far to put up.

I got in through a friend in the Bronx and a motorcycle club I'd been trying to photograph. I made friends with a few of the members at their clubhouse, and they were the ones who brought me up into the dens. They vouched for me, kept me safe, and translated when I couldn't follow the Spanish. Without them I never would have gotten in.

Each time I went up, I rode the subway from Midtown. Six months and no more. I'd spend the whole day with people—out on the street, then back upstairs where they got high. The buildings had no power. When it got dark I ran down to East Tremont Avenue for candles and photographed by them. I pushed my Kodak Tri-X hard in my Leica M6 rangefinders so the grain came apart, because that's how everything up there felt.

Pam is the one with the crack pipe near the window, on the bed. She and Sharon shotgunned the smoke through a straw between them. Nina, on a bed at night—she's the one on the heroin, feeling the rush. They knew what I was doing and gave me full access. After a while I was just the guy with the camera.

One of the last times I went up, they were gone. Nobody knew where. I never found any of them again.

Names have been changed.