Suzanne Stein

Suzanne Stein by Charles Hahn

Suzanne Stein is a social documentary/street photographer currently living in Philadelphia.  Suzanne frequently photographs the absolute chaos, madness, and lawlessness of the Kensington Avenue area of Philadelphia.  Kensington is a place of homelessness and despair. It is considered one of the worst neighborhoods in the country.  It is a place where prostitutes, drug dealers, and users meet to share a common border with civil society.   Many of the laws of our society have been replaced with the protocols set up by the infrastructure of the neighborhood.  Woven into this neighborhood are families with children who go about their daily routines of work and school. 

According to suzannesteinphoto.com, “I think of myself as a social realist and feel driven to present life as I see it unfold.  I feel very strongly that, as a photographer, it is vital to photograph everything in my sphere as honestly as possible.”

The Kensington neighborhood is hard to explain to someone who has not been there.  Prostitutes walk the streets hoping to make enough money for their next score of drugs. Multiple drug dealers sell their products on street corners to users and addicts. One of the drugs sold is Xylazine (an animal tranquilizer) or tranq as it is commonly referred to.  For an addict, a reaction to tranq can be a zombie-like effect which can last for hours.    One of the terms used in the area is Kensington yoga.  A user under the influence of tranq has the ability to maintain their balance.  The drug does not affect the user’s equilibrium as he slumps to various concocted positions and appears to be under a deep hypnotic paralysis.  

The Kensington area as a whole is a disturbing sight. As I visit this neighborhood for the first time, I have an overwhelming feeling that a bomb had gone off and this is what is left.  

The city of Philadelphia vowed to clean up the area and disposed of the main tent city running along the sidewalks of Kensington Avenue.  However, it merely created a dispersion of the tents to the side streets of the neighborhood which produced more confusion.  Many cops are present, but only to move people from one area of the street to another.  They are prepared with Narcan (Naloxone), a medication used to reverse or reduce the effects of opioids.  Narcan in commonly used to restore breathing after an opioid overdose. 

Suzanne goes on to say, “I feel that is it imperative to photograph everything, and I include in my images of the street, subject matter which is at times hard to look at.”

Philadelphia, PA.

Friday July 5, 2024

1:30 pm.

Suzanne and I met up at about 1:30 pm outside my hotel at Broad Street and Fairmount Avenue in the Allegheny West neighborhood of Philadelphia.  Before heading to Kensington Avenue, we walked around to shoot photographs and talk about all things to do with photography.

At what time did it click in that photography was something you wanted to do?

I took a trip to Europe with my son in 2015.  It was a trip we saved for, for a very long time.   I was an artist and I would draw.  We went to Belgium and I started taking iPhone pictures, and I thought they were pretty good.  They were just like travel pictures, but then I found myself taking photos of people in Bologna, Italy.   I was taking pictures of people on the street.  I didn’t really know what I was doing.  It was kind of like Helen Keller and discovering something.  I googled street photography, literally turned a corner, and I was struck by the light - like I died and my entire life changed.  I was trying to do street photography with this iPhone.  I had an eye.  The pictures weren’t very good compared to how they are now.

            The first camera I got was a Fujifilm digital.  I didn’t really understand the term F-stop until a couple years in.  I felt like I was just somebody’s mom, and I got really good pretty fast.  I kind of had to wade through a lot of condescending camera shop guys.  I was just super dedicated right away, and I discovered Los Angeles and Skid Row and that’s really what I wanted to document.  I was extremely motivated after I went to Skid Row.  I was really driven by what I saw.

I would say that when I started, I advanced compositionally very quickly, which is not uncommon with photographers who have an additional gift.

            Did you study any photographers?

            I never studied anyone.  My father was an amateur war historian, and I grew up seeing old black and white photos of WWII.  Of German concentration camps.  Of the photography of Roman Vishniac.  When I was a young teenager, I had seen W. Eugene Smith’s Minamanta: The Story of the Poisoning of a City, and of the People Who Chose to Carry the Burdon of Courage.  The work Smith did was very much on my mind for years.

            Also, some of the work Woody Allen did in black and white like Broadway Danny Rose.  Allen’s use of characters, and how to frame a picture.  With Woody Allen I saw the work, the narrative, the message, the context. 

What lenses do you use?

If I’m shooting street photography, I’ll always have a wide angle like a 25mm.  That’s my lens of choice if I only had one lens.  I’ll do some phases with focal length and I’ll always have a 24mm or 25mm.  I’ll also have a 50mm, 135mm, or a 90mm.  I like to use the Leica Q3 camera if I can carry it, depending on where I’m working.

Going into the Kensington neighborhood to shoot street photography you must be very careful exposing your equipment.  Can you speak about those safety issues.

In Kensington, I use my car and very rarely walk the streets.  That would be suicide.  I’m 5’4” and I don’t carry a weapon. I just can’t do that.  Skid Row in L.A. is much safer than Kensington Avenue.  On Skid Row I might carry a wide-angle lens and I’ll carry a portrait lens.  I would not carry my Leica on Skid Row.  I would only carry the Leica camera when I have a reasonable assumption of safety.  Kensington Avenue is where a lot of photographers go, and they’ll take the pictures and pay the person.  That’s no way to do a portrait of the neighborhood.  You have to have a car. it’s not safe any other way. You can’t walk. As a street photographer, I would walk for my photographs; however, to photograph Kensington Avenue you have to have a car. 

Suzanne shooting photos in the Kensington Avenue area of Philadelphia.  

Photo by Charles Hahn

Can you talk about how you shot street photographs at the start of your career, compared to how you adapted your style? How did you build your courage up?

I always had a lot of courage more than most people doing this.  I was coming at this as a single parent who had to claw her way through raising my son on my own with a lot of challenges. I came into this as an independent thinker.   When I started shooting photos on Skid Row in Los Angeles, I was terrified.  But, I had it in my mind that there were certain places I wanted to photograph, and I was desperate to do it.  I would literally stand on a street corner a few blocks away from where I wanted to be.  I would stare at where I wanted to be, and it took a while to get myself able to go and walk over to do it.  Once I broke through my fear on Skid Row, I discovered that I had to learn how to talk to people.

Photo by Suzanne Stein

I would say, I think a lot faster now than I did before.  I can look at a scene and would know what focal length I would use right away.  I might have a few options in my mind.  I always had a picture in my mind of what I wanted.  Sometimes I just get a feeling of what I wanted and I would hang around until I got what I wanted.

Does a particular vibe or energy a person on the street gives off have much to do with your shots?

You’re exactly right, and that’s how I’ve described it in the past.  Some people have a little bit of electricity about them and while they’re there it makes the scene.  Kind of a charisma or energy they give.  Once that person leaves, it’s over.  A lot of street photography now is driven by a pre-planned notion of a scene.  There are photographers that go to the Brooklyn Bridge on a foggy day and they will get a Brooklyn Bridge on a foggy day picture.  Those photographs are all similar. They all have similar things.  They are pre-planned, and to me it’s kind of canned street photography.

Photo by Suzanne Stein

Would you say photographing people is very difficult to do compared to landscape?

They do put people in there (Suzanne says in reference photographers who shoot the Brooklyn Bridge or a foggy day picture), but social media has influenced what the very talented photographers do.  The whole cinematic aesthetic, they’re nice but a derivative of all of each other.  Some of what you see in social media has already been done by other masters of photography.   Social media really encourages that.  That’s why I don’t spend a lot of time looking at what other people are doing.

Can you talk about the challenge of putting yourself in front of somebody who may look a bit disheveled?

Part of it is how you look.  I try to look very plain. I don’t wear a lot of make-up.  I wear my hair back most of the time.  I look very much the part of where I’m photographing at.

There are certain things that you cannot hide, like my teeth.  I have good teeth and that is something people really notice (if you have white teeth), believe it or not.  I do not do my nails.  There are things that kind of hint people off, so sometimes I’ll try to talk about myself and tell them about my struggles a little bit to make people more comfortable.  In Kensington, I drive a car that looks like I could be a drug dealer or a criminal.  You have to present yourself a certain way.  You also have to have a sense of who is going to attack you and who isn’t.  You have to pay close attention to body language.  There have been times I’ve been at a place where I misjudged and recently that just happened where I got beat up.

I was on Kensington Avenue, and I was photographing a drug dealer’s spot.  I’m now pretty much done, but part of my project is where drug dealers sell their drugs from, and it was the last part of my project.  It was dangerous. I’m not making friends doing it, and I don’t care about going up to people and getting them to trust me and playing the game.  I have to get drug dealers’ permission sometimes, but in order to make a real good portfolio on Kensington, you have to go to spots where they sell drugs from.  It’s very much a part of the landscape.

Some of the pictures are still-life like, where there’s nobody in them and they’re not as interesting.  The spots where the drugs are, are interesting because there could be graffiti or writing on the wall.  They’re very particular as drug dealers and you don’t see stuff like this anywhere else. 

Most of my shots I’ll do from my car using a 50mm or 70mm focal length which is much tighter than I normally use.  But obviously you’re not going to stand on a corner to shoot.

Photo by Suzanne Stein

There are different types of pictures I’ve done on those corners.  This particular picture I attempted to shoot has nobody in it.  There was nobody there, but it was atmospheric and rainy.  I really wanted to get it, and I sit in in my car with my window down and set my exposure.  The idea is I’m going to get out of my car and get the picture.  If there were drug dealers in the immediate area I might ask permission.  In this case, there was nobody out.  When I got out of my car to get my shot, I see this guy get out of the building.  There were actually drug dealers in the building I was parked in front of.  He came towards my car and he was a really big guy.  I should have rolled my window up and pulled out.  But I thought I would try to talk to him because I talk to people all the time.  He ran up to my car and he started beating on my car and punching me in the head.  He reached in my car and got my camera from me. 

I was trying to get away from him and I turned to car over (started the car) and hit the gas.  I hit a delivery van in from of me as I was trying to get the man (who was leaning into my car) out.  I was injured and pulled my car around, got out of my car, and demanded to get my camera back.  I wasn’t gonna let him have my camera and started screaming, yelling, and cursing at him.  One of the women there started beating me in the head and spit on me.  I was beat but wouldn’t leave.  I said, ‘You’re gonna give me my motherfucking camera back. Give me my fucking camera back, right now.’  These people were horrible, but I wasn’t gonna leave without my camera.  The whole street was against me.  There were roughly thirty people on this street block and 25 were close around me.  I get treated ok and most people know me, but in this part (of Kensington) they don’t really know me and it’s a very bad spot.  Nobody would help me, but I got my fucking camera back, Charlie.  He came back and he threw it at me.  Now I have PTSD.  I went back the next day and I took a picture of the spot, and I went back the day after that and took a picture of it.  I needed to do that.

Suzanne Stein on Broad Street in Philadelphia by Charles Hahn

How do you get permission to shoot a photo of someone putting a needle in their arm?

I don’t very often photograph someone shooting up.  I have a couple pictures of people doing neck shots.  The neck is the last resort for people who have beat-up veins.  There’s a lot of reasons why people do it, but it’s a very different thing that you encounter.  One thing about a neck shot is if the person shooting doesn’t like you, he can miss the vein and make you have a seizure.  They do things like that in Kensington. 

Are you working on any books or other publications to show your work?

I do.  I need to do a book, but I need a publisher.  I think my work is good enough to find a publisher, and I wouldn’t have to put my own money into it and self-publish my book.

Some photographers are very good at marketing, and I’ve been friends with some of them.  They work the algorithms and have marketing people that help them.  It’s all a marketing package.  That’s not me.  I’m out there doing something different, and I can’t package my work.  With the type of work I do, if I package it that way it’ll just look like I’m taking advantage (exploiting the homeless subjects).  It’s more than packaging my pictures. 

If I were to expose my work on social media, there will probably be a lot of copycats and a lot of bullshit.  Photography has been a very difficult place to make a living in.  The people who are succeeding are those guys that are good at marketing themselves.  But they’re not doing anything different.  They don’t push the envelope, and they don’t tell any stories.  They just take the same picture over and over again.

I absolutely love taking pictures.  After Kensington, I want to do a project totally different.  I have a lot of beautiful work that gets overshadowed by the rough stuff.   Photography in some respect is not pushing any envelopes anymore.  People are really focused so much on their social media.  They forget that photography is an art, and we’re not supposed to do the same things over and over again. We’re supposed to do things differently and we’re supposed to bring things to light that weren’t there before.  There are photographers looking for that big bang, and it’s hurting photography generally.  Now we have AI to contend with. It’s ruining photography.  Photographers who are heavy into social media marketing will have to worry the most because people will try to copy that stuff with AI.

Karii Photo by Suzanne Stein

The drive around the Kensington Avenue Neighborhood

            Suzanne and I walked a couple of short city blocks to her apartment.  There we got into her car for the short ride over to the Kensington Avenue area.

            Suzanne was a wealth of information on many topics surrounding the city of Philadelphia and especially Kensington.  She narrates as she drives me through.

Suzanne:         We are on Frankfort Avenue which is another main thoroughfare through Kensington.  When I first started here a year and a half ago it was a big drug street.  It was very dangerous here.  It was really bad and they (the city) cleaned them out.

The introduction to the streets of (the drug) Xylazine, otherwise known as tranq, changed the dynamic of Kensington.  The addicts are really zombie-like in a lot of ways.  Tranq combined with fentanyl is used.  Now they have what they call rhino-tranq, which is xylazine with a mixture of Medetomidine, but used for larger animals.  [It’s} so powerful you can’t even revive the users with Narcan when they over-dose. 

            There’s only so badly you can feel for a lot of these people because they do really bad things to each other and the neighborhood. 

            There’s a narrative that people want you to peddle about the victimhood of the sufferers of drug addiction on the street.  But it’s a very small and particular population that actually winds up on the street here (on Kensington).

            At times it is difficult to talk about a pregnant woman on the street who is trying to live and exist.  When on the other side of it, she is a serious fucking thief.  She robs old ladies in a Walmart. 

            We are now on Lehigh Street, and once we cross Lehigh, we will be in Kensington.  This used to be lined with tents.  All of this and I photographed all through here.  I have pictures of them sitting in shock looking at me.  I pulled up in my car and shot the picture, and I let them see me doing it. 

I want them looking at the camera.  There’s no other way to do it.  I have to photograph the corners of Kensington or I can’t say I did the whole thing.  That’s what people do: they take pictures of the addicts.  Tell their story, but they don’t talk about the drug lords?  How can they fucking do that?  So, I do it the only way you can do it.  I roll up, take the picture and basically – fuck you.  I can’t go to certain spots, but a lot of those people are gone now.

            We’re now on Summerset Street which a very fucked up street.  They’re trying to clean it out. We’re headed right onto Kensington Avenue now and you’ll start to see guys selling drugs in the open.  It depends on the day and the police activity.  There’s a lot of factors that affect whether or not they’re selling drugs at any given time. 

I got beat right around here (on Kensington).  They say they’re trying to have more police activity, but I don’t see it. 

            I had a couple of drug dealers try to get me (beat up) in my car right here.  When I started photographing here a couple of years ago, I found it endlessly fascinating.  I would see writing (graffiti) in different places.

There are a couple of cops over there, but they need to have a larger presence.   They need to work on these goddamn drug dealers.   Right along here (Suzanne points to an area on Kensington Avenue) there used to be dozens and dozens of addicts.  They called it Kensington Beach. I’ve photographed there a bunch of times.  Usually, the drug dealers are on one side (of the street) and the addicts on the other.

My photo in front of a convenient store.

            This is Allegheny Street.  K and A (Kensington Avenue and Allegheny Street) is a famous intersection.  Some of the addicts are homeless and some aren’t.  They could have a room somewhere or they could come from the suburbs.

            See that guy right there (Suzanne points to a disheveled man walking along), that’s bud, he’s a neck shooter.  That’s the guy in one of my photos shooting into the neck of his girlfriend under the American flag.  He was supposed to get clean.  He got off the street.  Somebody came and got him and he went into rehab.  His family took all these pictures, took him out to dinner.  It was all a big deal.  He left a few days later and his girlfriend who had been clean for months and months stole her sponsors car to come down here.  That is her in the wheelchair (Suzanne suddenly recognizes the girlfriend sitting in a wheelchair with other addicts on a busy street corner adjacent to Ruth Street).  She was supposed to go to school and totally threw away that chance.

Photo by Suzanne Stein

            There’s a lot of cool still-life photos you can get here.  I love the writing (graffiti).

            There are some dealers standing inside that convenient store (Suzanne points) and that’s what they do.  The question is, are the convenient store operators complicit or are they being held hostage?  The drug dealing situation is off the hook.

I would come here every single day to shoot photos.  Every once in a while, I would take a break and go to the gym.  It takes a lot of dedication to do this because you’re getting out of the car and you have to talk to people that would want to rob you, beat your ass, or stab you with a needle. 

            An out-reach worker was recently stabbed with a needle full of blood, and she was out there trying to help people.  Now, she’s completely traumatized.  She has to go on an Aids-treatment protocol for a month.  She got stabbed by somebody who’s a regular there and I have actually photographed.

            Look at that woman walking along (Suzanne points).  Look at her legs.  Look at her body.  She’s a young woman and she doesn’t look right.  Her face is stiff and her body is shaped wrong.  If you look at some of their faces, you see the drug is affecting their cartilage and their collagen.  These people are very young but they look very old.

            There’s a great picture right there.  Look at that, look at that, look at that! I have to get that (photograph).  I have to fucking get that.  I’m gonna come back and do that (drive around the block and photograph the scene).  See! (Suzanne speaks loudly).  This is what happens.  I stay the fuck out of here and everyone tells me, ‘Don’t go back. They’re gonna kill you.  Don’t go back.’  I come back, just to roll you through, and boom, I’m back in it. 

Nobody cares whether I do this or not.  I’m taking pictures that nobody else has ever done.  How many fucking people have taken pictures of the Brooklyn bridge during a rain storm?  They put their stuff on Instagram and everyone else does that too.  Nobody has ever done this (documenting Kensington the way Suzanne has), and I can’t get as many eyes on this project.  So maybe when I’m dead (Suzanne jokes).

Keep your window up.  People will shoot you with pepper spray.  They can sneak up to you on a scooter.  The dealers have things well planned out where they’ll have a look-out and many times they’re on a scooter.

I’m not going to be getting out of my car to ask people to take their picture unless I see somebody with the tranq wounds and the bandaging.  That is very, very compelling and I’ll photograph it.  But I have to be so careful that someone will say, ‘You’re that bitch that took a picture of my man when he was selling.’  It’s just that bad.    A lot of the people who do have a problem with me; In five or six months they won’t even be here.  They’ll either be dead or in jail.

Photographing here has to be done artfully and you have to have something narrative in the picture. 

Suzanne shooting graffiti.  Photo by Charles Hahn

This is a very interesting area, and these drug dealers are all Hispanic (Suzanne turns off of Kensington Avenue and onto a narrow side street).  I’m told the cartels run these streets.  They run the whole deal here with drugs.  I didn’t know that until recently.  But it does explain some stuff.  They found a dead guy about three weeks ago without his hands.  He was a white guy, a user who apparently did something to bother these dealers.  They killed him and cut his hands off.  The cops were down here and it was a crime scene, but nobody reported it in the local media. 

You could roll through, get out of the car to take some pictures, and smell something really bad like something died.  You don’t know if it’s somebody’s dog or some girl.  There are terrible things that happen here that are secrets.

There are so many missing people here in Kensington.  There are people who disappear all the time.  You see them and see them and then they’re gone.  Some went to jail and some were murdered.  Family members will post on Facebook: lost in Kensington, etc.

My photo of Suzanne photographing in Kensington
 

After the daylong adventure with Suzanne, we part ways and head off to our individual worlds. Back to civilization. 

Selfie by Suzanne

My photo of a building in Kensington