crack addicts and dealers hanging out, arranging purchases, smoking and keeping a look out

Harlem

November 2005

Harlem Crack

Sometimes stories happen right outside the window.

For many years, Harlem was a place that I visited but did not want to live in. In the 1980s and 1990s, Harlem had not recovered enough from the low to which it had fallen in the 1970s. Like many inner-city neighborhoods in the U.S., it was a place that had threatening areas, with run-down buildings, drugs and violence. Guarding against negative encounters and robbery was never far from my mind whenever I visited Harlem, whether walking or on my bicycle (I rode fast). I was fascinated by the area, as I was with most unique and legendary New York neighborhoods, but Harlem had many qualities in those days that were very disappointing if not depressing.

Despite this, in the Spring of 2002, I moved to Harlem. It was not because I had heard about the drop in crime and the new housing being constructed, although I was aware of those changes. Instead, I was looking for a small apartment and the most important factor was rent that I could afford. That was a nearly impossible feat in New York City, where intense demand for housing has driven rents to levels that are insane. On the dry, sunny but cool February morning that I saw the apartment, which looked decent, I noticed the street still had several run down buildings and three empty lots nearby. But nothing alarming was going on.

Shortly after moving in, I experienced the surprising and repulsive view of large rats taking over the streets at night. I saw crack addicts ignore the rats while they smoked outdoors from their pipes, 24 hours a day, during the first four years I lived in my apartment. Marijuana was sold from an apartment on the first floor of my building and the seller kept breaking the lock on the entrance door for the convenience of his buyers (he was finally evicted). Gunshots were fired one warm summer evening from the sidewalk in front of my building while I sat working at my computer. Boys and men, whether crack addicts or not, urinated on the street, sometimes with their penises visible for all to see. A female crack addict once joined this habit and urinated behind a car. A homeless man who had lived in one of the the empty lots kept bringing in trash, which once took city workers a whole day to clean out; the same man also smoked crack and later became violent against a resident on the block who had touched his trash.

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crack addicts

Harlem

July 2005

Several residents (including me) reported the drug use to the police, but the NYPD was more interested in the higher level dealers. There was some sense to that strategy, but the dealers didn't seem to be the biggest source of problems for residents. Instead, it was more likely that the addicts themselves, seeking money to support their habits, would commit robberies and burglaries.

After a while, I decided to record on video and with my camera the drug use that occurred daily in full view of my apartment. I thought that one day it might be useful evidence and if not, at least it captured a memorable if unappealing time in my life in New York City.

The block has now gentrified considerably since those days and condos have replaced the empty lots. One of the buildings has been renovated into relatively expensive apartments and the crack addicts no longer hang out on its stoop.

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crack addicts and some dealers hanging out, arranging purchases, smoking or keeping a look out

viewed from my apartment window

Harlem

November 2005

an addict used their fellow addict's coat as a shield while they inhaled crack

Harlem

November 2005

addicts hanging out on a stoop
Harlem

November 2005

I don't consider these images and videos to be true photojournalism, which usually requires more engagement with subjects or more aesthetic choices in terms of angles and lighting. Instead, the photographs are much closer to simple documentary photography, where there is no interference with the subjects who are observed from a distance. In the case of the Harlem crack addicts, it was far safer that way.

Although I no longer live in the apartment from which these images were taken, and the neighborhood has vastly gentrified since then, the photographs and videos remain a time capsule that captured what it was like in those years.