Junkie in blind alley
Junkie on the way out of shooting gallery on Lenox Ave in Harlem after his fix
Heroin addict in Harlem
This guy in a shooting gallery in Harlem asked me to photograph him "to help frighten other young people" so that they would not get to suffer like himself. He was unable to find any more healthy spots to shoot up in and had to take the foul-smelling bandage off his running sores to find a vein. He knew he had less than two years left to live.
Pushers in California
For a long time I hung out with pushers and criminals in a ghetto I lived in -
perhaps being one myself? During our various activities they let me photograph
almost without limits. Thus I was nearly shut down by cops with drawn guns when
they mistook my flash light for a gun shot.
Murder in New Orleans
I was playing pool with Butch. While it was my turn, he stepped outside for a
moment and killed this guy. I never saw Butch again.
Thou shalt not kill
New Orleans 1998
Prisoner eating on toilet
Through mysterious circumstances I was locked up with
my friend, Popeye Jackson, a prison leader, in order
to photograph him for the prison paper. Respected by
everyone in there, I was permitted to take pictures of the
other inmates in their most private moments.
Woman shot outside my window in New York
At the time I took this picture I was quite shaken. I was living with a prostitute
on 11th St when I heard shots outside. I rushed out and took this pictures - quite
shaken. Since then I have seen so much of the same in the US that I hardly
notice any more. Except when I in 1994 saw two people being executed right in
front of my eyes on the lower East Side. I grabbed my camera, but when I
realized I was looking down into the eyes of two dying people I couldn't take the
photo and started shaking all over.
Police and the affluent
With my shorthair wig on I managed to get in and live for a few days with the rich here in The Fountainbleau during the republican convention. I adopted so well that after a few days I started looking down at the demonstrators in the streets below with republican eyes as "filthy dirty hippies." At other moments I would take my wig off and join the demonstrators outside such as when I took this picture of the fortress of wealth I had just left.
Poor whites in Mississippi
Poor whites I always found the hardest to photograph - at least in the USA where
they have deeply internalized the prevailing American philosophy - that you are
yourself to be blamed for your own misery. Thus they are also robbed of the
dignity and pride characterizing the poor in other countries.
Klan meeting in Alabama
One night between my campus lectures I picked up a hitchhiking Klan member.
After helping him get in touch with his painful memories of incest in childhood,
he wanted to do anything for me. So he invited me to this mind-blowing secret
cross-burning. I let him use my credit card to call home to Tennessee just before
the meeting. There he learned that his uncle had just been killed by a black.
After those news I was very nervous all night that he would betray me to the
other Klan members.
Rich girl with maid
In Palm Beach, Florida, I lived with this family with a
Cuban maid.
Girl in red bed
Ocho Rios, Jamaica 1988
Linda and mother at sunset
So poor were they in Linda's family - right next to Disney World in Florida – that they rarely had light before I moved in with them. I had just stayed with some millionaires in Palm Beach and had a little "millionaire money" with me so I could buy kerosene for their old lamp. Linda ran out to meet her father when he walked home in the darkness, shouting: "Dad, dad, we got a present.... see, see, light.. ...we got light!"
Well, the joy didn't last forever! Today I have to visit Linda in prison whenever I want to see her. The scars from childhood poverty eventually defeated her.
jacob holdt
