It’s hard to write about Chris Arnade’s “Faces of Addiction” photo series because I keep getting distracted and drawn in by photos of women like Vanessa, a sex worker and survivor of domestic violence, and Beauty, who has bright neon green pants and hopes to go into childcare because she likes “to make people happy.”
Here’s how Arnade, who has a Ph.D. in physics and was a Wall Street banker for two decades, describes his work:
[These are] the stories of addicts in the Hunts Point neighborhood, the poorest in all of New York City. I post people’s stories as they tell them to me.
What I am hoping to do, by allowing my subjects to share their dreams and burdens with the viewer and by photographing them with respect, is to show that everyone, regardless of their station in life, is as valid as anyone else.
Its easy to ignore others. By not looking, by not talking to them, we can fall into constructing our own narrative that affirms our limited world view.
Take a look; you won’t be sorry.
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