Faces of Addiction by Chris Arnade is a personal photography project of such raw honesty and integrity that the portraits literally speak for themselves. The fact that Arnade is an ‘amateur’ only adds emphasis to my belief that great photographers are not pre-determined by their commercial markets so much as driven by their passion to produce arresting images no matter what
As Arnade says, these are “the stories of addicts in New York City – as they tell them to me. I am not a journalist,
I don’t verify, I just listen….Its very easy to ignore others. By not looking, by not talking to them, we can often fall into constructing our own narrative that affirms our limited world view. What I am hoping to do, by allowing my subjects to share their dreams and burdens and by photographing them with respect, is to show that everyone, regardless of their station in life, is as valid as anyone else”