Dupree took me one day to meet a friend of his, an ex prize fighter (boxer) named Sonny Land. Over the next 3 months or so we became very good friends. Sonny and I were inseparable. Being a naive, insecure, white Canadian kid in a African American ghetto, with many African American friends, was an experience I cherish to this day. I learned so much from my friends there, they were mostly in their 50s and so much more experienced and knowledgeable. I entered a culture, a world I knew nothing about, and left a changed person To this day the things I learned there, influence my life in a positive way.
This photograph was made in Sonny's closed Jazz Club bathroom which I had converted into a darkroom. The man's name I forget. Dupree and many of his friends slept in the club as I did. This man came in one day to shoot some heroin in my bathroom darkroom. He asked me for my sock, tied it around his arm, and injected heroin after heating/mixing it up with water in a bottle cap. I remember he told me he was a Vietnam vet, and that he had worked as a medic in the field, in battle. He must have had many demons. I only met him that one time. I do not know what happened to him.
The photo was made with a Canon A-1, with Tri-x.
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| Vietnam Vet After Shooting Heroin, West Oakland, California, USA 1985 |
