Suzanne Stein: On the Importance of Street Photography That Unsettles

Suzanne Stein: On the Importance of Street Photography That Unsettles

Eight years ago, we tagged along with Suzanne Stein for a stroll on the wild side of street photography to get a glimpse of the scenes that she strives to bring attention to: moments of tenderness against the bleak reality of life in Skid Row. She has since worked on multiple projects, but in our recent catch up, she mentions that her largest and most sustained body of work was centered around Kensington, Philadelphia. There, she documented the opioid epidemic, and later, the severe wounds, long-term disabilities and deaths brought by the xylazine crisis.

However, Stein stresses that the work was never only about addiction. Through it, she also wanted to show Kensington as a real place, not just as a symbol of addiction or poverty. “I photographed the entire neighborhood: the families who live there, the streets, the memorials to gunshot victims and overdose victims, the storefronts, the corners, the ordinary moments, and the broader atmosphere of a community under enormous pressure. The people suffering on the street are part of the story, but they are not the whole story.”

This pursuit caught the attention of Berlin-based Verena Kerfin Gallery, which showcased a selection of Stein’s work in Kensington in a recently concluded exhibition titled US: Slow Code. “She does not work on images that soothe. She works on images that unsettle,” they introduced the show. They also mirrored her sentiments about Kensington, describing the city as “the form misery takes when it is organized inside a wealthy state: visible enough to serve as a deterrent, invisible enough to remain politically consequence-free.” There, poverty is present not because money is absent, but it is arranged so that its inhabitants live and die with it, while the rest of the world outside maintains the routine.

Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein

Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein

Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein

A brave and distinct selection of images

“Verena made a very specific and courageous selection of images,” Stein says of the photos featured in the exhibit. She sent a shortlist of images, but the gallery went for a very particular final selection aligned with Verena Kerfin’s vision. With her courageous edit, the exhibit revealed a gradual deterioration happening in plain sight — what Stein considers as a form of slow public emergency.

“She chose photographs of people lying down, incapacitated, or otherwise physically overcome, and she used that selection to make a larger statement about abandonment in the United States,” Stein says, adding that the images would be very difficult, if not impossible, to exhibit or publish in the US.

While she wasn’t able to attend the exhibit in Berlin, she was able to speak directly to the attendees about her work, process, and what she was trying to show through a video installation. “I was told that people were very interested, that they stayed with the images, and that they spent real time in the gallery. That meant a lot to me, especially because the work is difficult and asks something of the viewer.”

Kensington’s aftermath

While Kensington was a major part of her documentary and street photography, Stein admitted that the three years she spent deeply immersed in the work turned her away from documenting addiction directly. Apart from the physical aggression and dangerous situations she experienced there, the work exposed her to negativity that proved difficult to absorb, and even more challenging to recover from.

“I met people and witnessed situations that did not reinforce positive feelings about humanity. That is difficult to say, but it’s true. The work took a long time to recover from emotionally and physically… When you are surrounded by trauma, decay, violence, addiction, strong odors, disturbing sights, and constant emotional intensity, it seeps into you.“

While she no longer wants to do the same kind of work, Stein isn’t done documenting serious social issues. It’s still a calling, but she doesn’t want to be known only for addiction, poverty, and homelessness.

“I don’t really want to keep photographing people on the street suffering from addiction in the same way. If I do, it would have to be very different, or it would have to be part of a specific assignment with a clear purpose.”

Now, she’s more interested in documenting and raising awareness about Kensington’s aftermath: parents who have lost children to overdose, families trying to rebuild, or parents whose children have survived but are now permanently disabled. This approach allows her to still be connected to the story, but with a different but equally meaningful focus.

“It is a very complicated subject to photograph, especially because photographers who look at it honestly are often vilified. There is a deep resistance to seeing what is actually happening on American streets,” Stein reflects, noting the “much more sanitized version” that mainstream media prefers to show about these realities.

Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein

Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein

Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein

Tracing personal imprints

Kensington’s tremendous impact on Stein’s personal life extends to the mental imprint of the experience, where serious distress drove her to become callous just to keep working. “You have to be able to function in situations that are painful, ugly, dangerous, and overwhelming,” she reflects. However, she also concedes to being drawn to these realities having lived through her own share of personal distress. The familiarity invited her to dig deeper through documentary and street photography instead of looking away from people and situations that many intentionally ignore.

“But the reason I’ve been drawn to this work in the first place is that I have also lived with serious distress myself — financial instability, raising my son on the autistic spectrum by myself, navigating the photography world, and coming from a family history that involved alcoholism and addiction.”

Stein also admits to succumbing to the cost of being immersed in perilous environments like Kensington, especially the mental toll that she had to live with.

“Even if you are there to tell a story, and even if you understand what you are doing intellectually, it still affects your nervous system and your outlook. I think the work has made me more negative at times, and probably more difficult to be around. I’ve had to be honest with myself about that. Part of that comes from the frustration of seeing these crises continue while the world barely responds.“

Tracing the personal imprints of her Kensington work also led her to realize the big difference from her Skid Row experience. While Skid Row still led her to form meaningful relationships with some of her subjects, the dark side of humanity reared its ugly head in Kensington.

“Skid Row was also full of terrible things. I witnessed bondage, trafficking, and many situations I have never fully written about or discussed. But many of the people I photographed there had tremendous spirit, soul, humor, and character. I formed real relationships with some of them, and I am still very attached to them.

Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein

”Kensington was different. To be perfectly honest, I don’t feel that I came away from Kensington with many meaningful relationships. The drugs there, and the particular conditions on those streets, seemed to hollow people out in a different way. Seeing that over and over affected me deeply. The level of criminality, exploitation, and desperation on all sides made it very difficult to keep the faith. That has changed my outlook, and I am still trying to move past it — to regain some sense of hope, purpose, and belief in people.”

Reframing discussions on “poverty porn” in street photography

Heated debates and spirited discussions about “poverty porn” in documentary and street photography have led to some accepted ideas about what is acceptable and what is offensive. Photographing homelessness, for example, lies on top of the list of don’ts among street photography circles. Stein, however, detests the term itself, as she finds it often used in a way that shuts down the conversation before it can even begin.

For Stein, the term itself and framing discussions around marginalized members of society often shame — or attempt to shame — photographers like her who are advocating awareness about difficult realities. “That does not mean photographers are above criticism. Of course not,” she’s also quick to emphasize, especially when it’s difficult to identify when a body of work becomes borderline exploitation. She cites conflict photography as one of the examples where this tends to happen.

“When you photograph anyone in distress, whether they are in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Syria, Kensington, or Skid Row, you are walking a very fine line between exploitation and information. Very few photographers walk that line perfectly every time. Many of us step over it at some point. Most of us doing this work have good intentions, but some photographers are doing it for notoriety, career advancement, or because that is simply what photojournalists do: they pack their bags, go to a war zone, and photograph suffering.

“We need to apply the same rigorous photographic attention to the streets of the United States that we apply to places like Ukraine or Gaza. These crises are here too, and they deserve to be seen with the same seriousness.”

An unsettling moment of tenderness

On her favorite photographs featured in the exhibit, Stein shares the poignant story behind the photo of Mike injecting Crystal in the neck with fentanyl and xylazine, and why it’s such an important image for her:

Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein

“Before I went to Kensington, I had never seen people inject into the neck before. Of course it happens in other places, but in Kensington it is extremely common. When I first saw it in 2022, I was in a state of shock. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and I couldn’t believe how openly it was happening. It was a very disturbing sight.

“The neck injection is a very specific situation. Often, by the time people are doing that, the veins in their arms are no longer usable. I have seen people collapse after neck injections. I have seen people end up on the ground, and I have had to call 911 for them. There is a lot of danger around it, and there is also a lot of manipulation and exploitation around it. In Kensington, there are people who make money giving other people injections. They may charge a few dollars, or sometimes much more. People come in from the suburbs, they don’t know how to inject, or they are afraid of needles, and they find someone on the street to do it for them. So it becomes almost a cottage industry.

“That is something many people don’t understand. A lot of young people become addicted to opioids, but they are still squeamish about needles. They don’t necessarily know how to inject themselves. Some literally cannot do it. So they end up dependent not only on the drug, but on other people to help them use it.

“In this particular situation, Crystal was dope sick because she could not find a usable vein and was not good at injecting herself. Mike stepped in and injected her in the neck. In that moment, he was preventing her from going deeper into withdrawal. It is a brutal situation, but there was also a kind of intimacy and trust between them. That contradiction is part of what makes the photograph important to me.

“I also value the picture because I had gained enough trust that they allowed me to photograph what was happening. That kind of access does not come from parachuting in. It comes from being present, from spending time, from not treating people like grotesque spectacle.

“There is also a gesture in the photograph that matters. Crystal has her thumb in her mouth. When I first saw that, I thought it might be a self-soothing gesture, almost like a child sucking her thumb for comfort. But later I understood that it had another purpose: it helped make the neck vein more visible for the person injecting her. That small gesture changes the whole image. It looks vulnerable, almost childlike, but it is also part of the mechanics of addiction. That is why the photograph stays with me. It contains tenderness, danger, dependence, trust, and horror all at once.”

Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein

Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein

Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein

Taking art where others refuse to look

Through the exhibit, Verena Kerfin Gallery reinforced the intent behind Stein’s work, saying that art begins precisely where others do not want to look, or cannot look. But Stein also notes that it can really begin anywhere, and is shaped by experiences, advantages, wounds, and perspectives unique and personal to each artist. “My life pushed me in a certain direction; someone else’s life might lead them to make something much lighter, softer, or more decorative. That is still art,” she muses.

However, for the kind of work that she does, Stein believes that she combines art with documentary sensibility to get underneath bias. Many forms of photography, she says, reinforces existing biases. “War photography often reinforces a particular political position. Popular street photography often relies on visual puns, gimmicks, light and shadow, and repeated tropes. It can be clever, but it often doesn’t challenge the viewer very much.”

“When I photograph places like Kensington, Skid Row, or people living on the margins, I’m trying to look past the attractive narrative, past the acceptable narrative, and show what is actually there.”

As with many creatives, seeing her work in galleries is always a welcome opportunity, but she also wants it to be accessible. Most people do not intentionally seek out photography galleries, but she would love for her work to be seen by more people in more public spaces.

“I don’t always know where the work belongs. I just know that I keep making it. I still hope it can reach young people, and people who need to see beyond the filtered version of reality we are usually given. But that is becoming harder in a culture shaped by censorship, algorithms, social gatekeeping, and media institutions that often refuse to think outside their own box.”

Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein

Finally, Stein doesn’t usually make rigid plans for her work, but follows her instinct on where to take her photography next. In many of the people and scenes she photographed, a story simply revealed itself as she went about her days. “I stumble into a person or a situation that has social intensity, emotional intensity, or personal intensity, and then I follow it.”

Addiction will always be part of her work in some shape or form, but Stein also wants to do more street photography that explores other lighthearted themes that are just as compelling and meaningful. “Right now, I’m interested in street photography again because it allows me to disengage somewhat from the heaviest subjects. Street photography feels lighter to me, even though I can still tell serious stories through it. I always have. But it also allows for humor, strangeness, beauty, and everyday life.”

Make sure to check out Suzanne Stein’s website to see more of her work, and US: Slow Code on Verena Kerfin Gallery to find out more about the exhibit.

Visit & Follow Suzanne on her Instagram

WITH OUR GRATITUDE