THE HUMAN COST | AMERICA’S DRUG PLAGUE

JAMES NACHTWEY JEFFREY STOCKBRIDGE MARK E. TRENT

Bronx Documentary Center Annex Gallery June 5th - July 5th, 2021 Opening Reception (by reservation only) June 5th, 6-9pm

This exhibition contains graphic content that may be disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.

Last year, America lost 81,000 men, women and children to drug overdoses. Driven primarily by the opioid crisis--and abetted by the pill-pushing of pharmaceutical companies--millions of individuals and countless families were devastated by addiction.

The war on drugs has failed: from sea to shining sea, fentanyl, heroin, K2, crystal meth, cocaine and other drugs are available in nearly every town and city. Drug-related violence has endangered many of our streets, including Courtlandt Avenue, home to the Bronx Documentary Center.

After decades of ever changing anti-drug strategies, we are still left with familiar and yet unanswered questions: how to stop the overdoses; how to keep our youth from addiction; how to stop drug-related violence; how to offer humanitarian treatment.

The Bronx Documentary Center’s upcoming photo exhibition, The Human Cost: America’s Drug Plague, explores these issues and portrays the human toll of America’s drug scourge. The deeply personal stories told here--of losing children, families and freedom--provide a stark but compassionate look at a very complex dynamic.

James Nachtwey, the dean of American confict photographers, reports with visual journalist and editor, Paul Moakley, from New Hampshire, Ohio, Boston, San Francisco and beyond. Jeffrey Stockbridge documents Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood over the course of 6 years. And Mark Trent follows a tight-knit group of friends in West Virginia through cycles of substance abuse and tragic death. The BDC hopes this exhibition will lead to productive discussions about an intractable American problem.

Exhibition curated by Michael Kamber and Cynthia Rivera

Bronx Documentary Center Annex Gallery 364 E 151st St, Bronx, NY 10455 Wednesday-Friday 3-7pm and Saturday-Sunday 12-5pm

Press contact Myrtille Beauvert | +1 347 295 7694 | [email protected]

Caption top image: Carol, 2010 © Jeffrey Stockbridge OPIOID DIARIES - JAMES NACHTWEY | PAUL MOAKLEY

The opioid crisis is the worst addiction epidemic in American history. Drug overdoses kill more than 64,000 people per year, and the nation’s life expectancy has fallen for two years in a row. But there is a key part of the story that statistics can’t tell. In 2017, for over the course of a year, photographer James Nachtwey set out to document the opioid crisis in America through the people on its front lines. Alongside TIME’s deputy director of photography, Paul Moakley, the pair traveled the country gathering stories from users, families, frst responders and others at the heart of the epidemic. Here, Nachtwey’s images are paired with quotes from Moakley’s interviews, which have been edited. The voices are a mix of people in the photos and others who are connected to them. The Opioid Diaries is a visual record of a national emergency—and it demands our urgent attention.

Left: Holly, detoxing in the Montgomery County Jail in Dayton, Ohio, on July 3, 2017. Right: Dorothy Onikute, 33, a deputy sheriff with the Rio Arriba County sheriff’s offce, responding to an overdose call on Feb. 4, on the side of the road in Alcalde, N.M. Photographs by James Nachtwey for TIME

James Nachtwey is a veteran photojournalist who graduated from Dartmouth College. He began his career as a newspaper photographer in 1976, became a freelancer in 1980, and has been a contract photographer with TIME Magazine since 1984. He has worked worldwide, committed to documenting wars and critical social issues.

Nachtwey was one of the founders of the photo agency VII, where he was a member from 2001 to 2008. He has received numerous awards, including the Dan David Prize, the TED Prize, the Robert Capa Gold Medal, and two World Press Photo awards. He has been the recipient of lifetime achievement awards from the Overseas Press Club, TIME, Inc., and the American Society of Magazine Editors. His books include Deeds of War and Inferno.

Nachtwey's photographs are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Getty Museum among other venues. He has had numerous solo exhibitions worldwide.

Paul Moakley is a visual journalist and Editor at large for special projects, at TIME where he produces and reports stories. He previously was the deputy director of photography and visual enterprise of TIME from 2010-2018. He has mainly covered national news and special projects such as Person of the Year. He was part of the Emmy award winning team for TIME’s interactive documentary “Beyond 9/11: Portraits of Resilience” and in 2015 he received a First Prize in the World Press Photo Awards for a short video feature. Previously he was a senior photo editor at Newsweek and photo editor of PDN (Photo District News). Moakley was an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He lives at the Alice Austen House Museum, home of one of America’s earliest photographers, as caretaker and curator of the museum. KENSINGTON BLUES - JEFFREY STOCKBRIDGE

Kensington Blues by Jeffrey Stockbridge is a decade-long documentary project about the opioid crisis in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Featuring large-format photography, audio interviews, journal entries and video Stockbridge utilizes a combination of styles and formats to humanize those suffering from addiction.

“During the 19th century the neighborhood of Kensington in North Philadelphia was a strong working-class district, a national leader of the textile industry and home to a diverse population of immigrants. Like many rust belt cities, industrial restructuring of the mid twentieth century led to a sharp economic decline including high unemployment and a signifcant population loss.

When the jobs disappeared, the drugs moved in.

Today, half of Kensington residents live at or below the poverty line. The neighborhood has become an epicenter of the opioid crisis and is infamous for open air drug use, prostitution and violent crime. With the roaring El train overhead, Kensington Avenue (the major business corridor in the neighborhood) is in a state of perpetual hustle. Heroin, Fentanyl, K-2, Crystal, Crack, Xanax, Subs--just about any drug that exists in the modern world is bought and sold in Kensington. Women, some as young as twenty years old, and others who’ve been working the Avenue for decades, populate the neighborhood in great numbers. Prostitution has become a social norm. Drug users sell clean packaged needles for a dollar a piece--fve needles equals a bag of dope.

Working with a large-format flm camera, I chose a slow photographic process in order to literally slow down the rapid speed of life as it happens along the Ave. The focus of my photographic work is portraiture. I want to tap into the state of mind of those who are struggling to survive their addiction. Together my subjects and I have entered into a collaboration of sorts. Through audio recordings, journal entries and video, we are working to highlight the voices of those with lived experience. This work would not be possible without their trust and guidance. By sharing the intimate details of their plight, those I photograph are taking a stand to effectively humanize addiction and challenge the stigma that all drug addicts are morally corrupt. As the opioid crisis has taught us, addiction can happen to anyone.“

Left: Bobby, 2010. Middle: Mary, 2009. Right:. Jamie, 2012. © Jeffrey Stockbridge

Jeffrey Stockbridge (b.1982) is a photographer and fne-art printer based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Stockbridge graduated from Drexel University with a BS in Photography in 2005. Stockbridge’s frst monograph Kensington Blues was released in 2017, and has received international acclaim with exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Technische Sammlungen in Dresden. In 2019, Stockbridge was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Memorial Fellowship in Photography. In 2011, Stockbridge was awarded 3rd place in the Taylor-Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Stockbridge is a past recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Grant, an Independence Foundation Fellowship Grant and a CFEVA Fellowship. His work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, The BBC, Time Magazine, Undark and The Telegraph UK. DESPAIR, LOVE AND LOSS - MARK E. TRENT

None of us knew what was happening or how destructive this would be. We began seeing more and more overdoses and suicides in our community. The details were scarce and the stigma that came with drug abuse masked the early deaths until it was so common it didn’t phase us anymore; the word pillhead began being used to describe those people on drugs. This was long before it touched nearly everyone in West Virginia and across the country.

With the help of friends I traveled to interview small time dealers, addicts and local law enforcement in an attempt to understand the scope of it all. I never did. This body of work started taking shape when I was at a softball game with a long time friend. Her name is Allie. I told her what I was trying to do and she said “Stick with me and I will show you what’s going on.”

From there it was a matter of seeing what was right in front of me. I documented Allie and her friends and lovers as they struggled in active addiction and slowly lost themselves and each other. This group of women let me into their lives behind closed doors and gave me access to make this work possible. They didn’t have to. They are the reason this work exists. They were star basketball players, young mothers, and individuals that held jobs and had real dreams. One day a knee injury supplied the prescription opiate that led to the addiction that spread through their group of friends and community.

My goal with this project was longevity. I wanted to follow it through until the end. My hope is that these photographs will tell a story about a small group of individuals that suffered through a crisis few saw coming. Today Allie is six years sober. Peakay is working toward sobriety with medical assisted treatments. Barbie died of an overdose in her bed alongside her lover Kim. Jessie tells me she is “going good,” but to be honest I never know the truth with her.

Left: Allie crying, facing jail time and missing Barbie who died of an overdose, after a long night of using. Allie and Regina catching snowfakes after a close friend's funeral. © Mark E. Trent

Mark E. Trent is a photographer and flmmaker based in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. Shortly after graduating from The Savannah College of Art and Design, Trent moved to New York City and began working in international brand marketing. In 2018, The Words Matter, a flm directed by Trent for Procter and Gamble documenting the companies efforts to protect their LGBTQIA employees, was awarded a Cannes Lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Trent’s photography primarily focuses on life in Appalachia. In 2018, Love, Loss, Despair, a long-term photo essay chronicling opioid abuse in Rainelle, West Virginia, was published with The New York Times. His work has also been featured on NBC and CNN.