Four years ago, a Wall Street trader named Chris Arnade wandered into Hunts Point, a Bronx neighborhood nestled in the poorest Congressional district in the nation and often referred to as New York City's red light district. He didn't know why he was there, but he had his camera, and he started snapping photographs.
Then he came back. Again and again. Soon he started writing about what he saw there, posting both images and text on Facebook, Flickr, and Tumblr, and capturing the cycle of abuse, drugs, and sex that kept people chained to the neighborhood.
His work -- about the weapons carried by prostitutes; about abuse from pimps called Payroll, Mosquito, and Escrow; about oral sex, the currency of the desperate -- shocked many of his Wall Street colleagues, and occasionally, his three teenage daughters.
In early 2012, the New York Times featured his work. But in the past several months, much has changed: He quit his job with Citibank and now spends about five days a week with the Hunts Point crew, often working with journalist Cassie Rodenberg. His subjects have ceased to be merely subjects, he says, and they've pulled him down a twisty, intimate path from which he believes he cannot escape.
"I think what frustrated me most about the Times article was that it made it look like this is a series on prostitution," he said, "when it's in fact a series on addiction. But I would say now it's even more a story about abuse, mostly sexual abuse."
His writing, like his photos, has stayed crisp and unencumbered.
"I'm following a few subjects much more deeply," he said, "into the hospitals, into the jails, the prisons, the court system -- as well as just getting more and more access to people, in terms of going into their houses, getting more about their back stories. Most people no longer think I'm an undercover cop."
His critics call him exploitive: a privileged white man preying on poor people, mostly women. Journalists sometimes knock his methods: He doesn't hesitate to pay a prostitute $20 to take her picture, or to hand $10 to an addict in withdrawal.
To Arnade, though, what matters is how his subjects feel.
This month he visited Daphenie Hill, 22, a homeless prostitute serving time at the jail on Rikers Island.
When he arrived, Hill wrapped her arms around Arnade. Leaning over a tiny wooden table, dressed in a shapeless gray-green prison uniform, she described her first encounter with him. "I was scared," she said. "Why should I open up? But after Chris posted my picture on the Internet, I felt amazing. People commented and made me feel like I could accomplish a lot. After that, they knew my pain."
Daphenie Hill, 22, called “Beauty,” was born and raised in Oklahoma. She was brought to New York by a pimp who promised her she could "make some mad money." She has since had nine pimps: "Got my first black eye from one, another punched me in mouth, but this guy is good to me."
Manny Quiles is a former pro boxer from Connecticut, now an addict living in a homeless shelter. Manny's career ended after several injuries left him with a right eye that is unable to focus. Unable to fight, with little other skills, he found himself homeless and turned to heroin.
Michael and Pam smoking crack in the small crawl space under the expressway where they live.
Michael’s new home, a crawl space he lovingly called “my cave.” At just slightly over five feet, Michael can get in and out of the space in seconds. “The police are like you,” he said to Arnade, “big and lazy. They are not, I repeat, not going to find me.”
This photo is the first in an ongoing series in which Arnade asked subjects to show the objects they carried for self defense. Weapon: Railroad spike. Used it? "No, but I will. Hit a john right upside the head."
Vanessa, 35, had three children with an abusive husband. She "lost her mind, started doing heroin," after losing the children, who were taken away. The drugs led to homelessness and prostitution. When Arnade asked her how she wanted to be described, a friend jumped in. "She's the sweetest woman I know. She will give you the shirt off her back, if she has one on."
Erik and Sonia. “I have already destroyed myself,” said Erik. “I can’t walk by a corner with a pocket of money and not buy dope.”
Jennifer, 21, sells her body for drugs, mostly heroin. "I'm very intelligent but sometimes I feel disgusting because of what I do. I'm not really too happy with life, but I'm happy to be alive." Jennifer grew up with foster parents. Her biological mother and father were addicts. She remembers the smell of drugs from her childhood.
Charlie, 41, is a female pimp. “I have to work twice as hard, be twice as tough.” She lost her mother at 13, and took to the streets, selling drugs, boosting from stores, and stealing cars. Eventually, she turned to pimping.
Brenda, 45, started doing heroin at 18. "At my lowest point, I destroyed myself. I got my four kids taken away." Still, she said she knows she was a good mother, never doing drugs in front of watchful eyes, always making sure her kids had a home-cooked meal to eat. "They thanked me even. 'I never went to bed hungry, Ma,'" she said.
Takeesha, photographed after learning she’d had miscarriage. “I was thrown down the stairs. Will we stay together? I still love him, but you don’t see him around do you? If he works on his issues, we might be able to get together again.”
Pam, 46, was raped at the age of 11. She now walks the streets, trying to make enough for heroin or crack. During her last stint in jail -- four years for robbery -- she wrote a series of 26 children's books, one for each letter of the alphabet. "My dream is to publish the books and be able to use the money to support my paraplegic brother in-law."
Jackie, 28. "You live on the streets as a girl, you get raped,” she said. “It just is." Her dream? "I want to get my GED, become a nurse, and get my kids back. I just want my kids."
Natalie, 41, grew up in a strict Italian Catholic family in Westchester. As she walked around Hunts Point, she shared pictures of her son, now in college, who was raised by her parents. She described him as a "wonderful, straight geek, the smartest, best kid a mother could hope for."
Wayne, pushing his bike and his scrap-metal cart up a long hill, racing to reach the metal yard before it closed. “I am blessed,” he said. “I am still here. Many others have gone. I am blessed. We are all blessed."
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