personal work: "you must not know 'bout me..."

I met Nina one early spring evening in 2007. She was standing on the corner by herself, wearing tight jeans and a puffy black fur jacket. I introduced myself to her and began photographing her that evening. Over the next several months, I spent many days and nights with Nina, a street-based sex worker in the desolate, industrial neighborhood of Hunts Point in the South Bronx. I photographed her in her home and in the streets where she works. During this time I met other women working in the streets of Hunts Point, including Babygirl and Sonya. I saw how these women form a community, taking the place of estranged family. I saw how isolated they are from everything outside this small circle and how often they are completely alone, walking the streets day after day and night after night. As I continued to work with these women, it became clear to me how vulnerable they are to abuse and how few resources are available to them. Almost all of the women I met working in the streets of the South Bronx have been in jail numerous times and face problems of drug dependency, health issues and homelessness.

When I began making photographs in Hunts Point I wanted to make pictures that countered negative stereotypes and helped the viewer relate to the people in the pictures. I wanted people to see the women in the photos as the complex human beings they are and not as objects of pity or contempt. I struggled with the project, in part because what I found in Hunts Point was a tremendous amount of despair, anger and pain and not very much joy or hope. I photographed what the women showed me of their lives and I tried to do so in a way that neither dramatized nor romanticized what was happening.

It was very important for me to share the work I was doing with the women I photographed so I frequently brought prints for them. I was surprised that they often really liked the pictures and would frame them or make collages of them and put them up on the wall. Their responses to the photos made me feel that I was portraying them in a way they were comfortable with; that they felt I was showing them as they are.

Nina.Southern Boulevard, South Bronx 2007.
   
Nina looking out the window of her apartment. The scars on her back are the result of third degree burns she suffered in an apartment fire when she was a child. Southern Boulevard, South Bronx 2007.
   
Nina sitting on her bed.Southern Boulevard, South Bronx 2007.
     
  
A school photo of Nina’s eleven year-old son on the floor of her apartment.Southern Boulevard, South Bronx 2007.
   
Babygirl with scratches she got fighting with another woman while she was in prison.Hunts Point, South Bronx 2007.
   
Sonya looking at a photograph of her granddaughter, whom she has yet to meet because she is estranged from her daughter (the child's mother). Hunts Point, South Bronx 2008.
     
  
Smoking crack in the car on the way to visit Delilah in the hospital.East Harlem 2007.
   
Sidewalk graffiti. Hunts Point, South Bronx 2007.
   
Babygirl trying to "catch a date".Hunts Point, South Bronx 2008.
     
  
Nina standing on the corner where she works.Hunts Point, South Bronx 2007.
   
Talking to a customer.Hunts Point, South Bronx 2007.
   
Nina in the street outside the police precinct.Harlem 2007.
     
  
Getting high and watching TV.Hunts Point, South Bronx 2007.
   
Sonya and Babygirl.Hunts Point, South Bronx 2008.
   
Sonya and Gladys fighting.Hunts Point, South Bronx 2008.
     
  
Sonya opening a gift from Babygirl. Hunts Point, South Bronx 2008.
   
Babygirl getting ready to go out to work.Hunts Point, South Bronx 2007.
   
Hunts Point, South Bronx 2008.
     
  
Waiting for customers in the street at night.Hunts Point, South Bronx 2007.
   
Nina in the street at night,Hunts Point, South Bronx 2007.
   
Nina standing in the doorway of her apartment.Southern Boulevard, South Bronx 2007.
     
  
Babygirl reflected in a mirror smoking a cigarette.Hunts Point, South Bronx 2007.
   
Watching live video footage from the building's security cameras. Hunts Point, South Bronx 2007.
   
Sonya getting high in an empty apartment.Hunts Point, South Bronx 2008.
     
  
Sonya's laundry drying in the bathroom.Hunts Point, South Bronx 2008.
   
Nina frying pork chops for dinner.Southern Boulevard, South Bronx 2007.
   
Sonya with a handful of cash.Hunts Point, South Bronx 2008.
     
  
Bitches 'n ho's.Hunts Point, South Bronx 2008.
   
Babygirl in bed.Hunts Point, South Bronx 2007.
   
Nina getting ready to go out.Southern Boulevard, South Bronx 2007.