1993 Photo Contest, Daily Life, 3rd prize
Photographer

Ron Tarver

The Philadelphia Inquirer

01 January, 1992

In the late 1980s heroin addicts started to flood into Stella Street. They took over abandoned houses, turning many of them into 'shooting galleries', where customers could buy drugs which the dealer injected for an additional fee. The junkies washed in the street, using water from a nearby fire hydrant. The turning point came when the police raided the heroin haunts and arrested the tenants. Demolition of their houses started the same day.

About the photographer

Ron Tarver

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