Jessica Dimmock: The Ninth Floor (headlong into the rabbit hole)

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I found this photographer on the blog, American Suburb X. In 2007 her three-year-long body of work, "The Ninth Floor", came out. In 2004, Jessica began following a group of about 20-30 young addicts. She was a film student at the time, and was wandering the streets with her camera when a coke dealer approached her. He gave her permission to follow and photograph him. The last place he took her was the apartment where her project started. He was arrested soon after and never heard from again. But because of his introduction, she was able to return with some prints. After a while, she was welcome to return whenever she wanted. When she found "the crew", they were living on the ninth floor of a building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The squatters slowly destroyed the floor, selling anything of value, until they were eventually evicted. For the next three years, Jessica followed several of the original squatters, documenting their recovery attempts, arrests, jail time, pregnancy, and survival. At times she would stay with one or more of them for several days.

I find these photos so impressive because of their painful honesty. Several reporters noted that her work is so unique because it was shot when she was still a student. She didn't have time to become jaded and blend in with crowd. None of the photographs are staged, or have artificial lighting. Despite what happened, Jessica never intervened with her subjects; "at this point I have spent a great deal of time with some of the people from this project and I care about them a great deal. I recognize that I cannot change them, nor save them, but they have been incredibly open with me and there is a lot of trust in our relationship. It is hard to watch these patterns get repeated and to watch the pain that occurs".

In 2006, The Ninth Floor won both Magnum Photos’ Inge Morath Prize, the Marty Forsher Fellowship for Humanistic Photography of PDN/Parsons.