Earlier this year, AFP photographer Dominick Reuter and Getty photographer Spencer Platt both visited the Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to photograph “El Campamento,” one of the largest open-air drug markets and shooting galleries on the East Coast, before it was shut down. According to Getty: “People come from throughout the city, and some as far away as the Midwest, for heroin that is remarkably cheap and pure.” At the end of July, the encampment, littered with mattresses, used needles and other refuse, started to be cleaned up and closed down by city workers and Consolidated Rail employees, while outreach workers try to help place homeless residents of the camp. Getty further reported that “over 900 people died last year in Philadelphia from opioid overdoses, a 30 percent increase from 2015.”
Closing Down a Notorious Heroin Camp in Philadelphia
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Samantha, a homeless heroin addict, pauses under a bridge where she lives with other addicts in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, on July 31, 2017. Kensington has become a hub for heroin use. Today was the first day of a long-anticipated clean-up of one of the largest open-air drug markets on the East Coast. #
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Jessica, a homeless heroin addict, arranges some belongings around the spot under the bridge where she lives in Kensington, Philadelphia, on April 14, 2017. "Eighty percent of us want to get out," said Jessica, before outlining the numerous ways she has tried to get treatment for her addiction. In one case, she said, there weren't any available beds. In another, a treatment provider required a positive drug test before delivering aid, meaning if she hadn't used recently, she'd be denied. Instead of getting treatment, she spends her nights trying to keep warm on a mattress under a bridge in the very spot where she was raped and infected with HIV. #
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A discarded needle and row of chairs near a heroin encampment in Kensington on April 10, 2017. According to the city's health commissioner, Philadelphia is on track to see 33 percent more drug-overdose deaths in 2017 than last year. #
Dominick Reuter / AFP / Getty -
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Mike, 22, a heroin addict who began using opiates when he was 13, pauses to shoot up by a railway underpass in the Kensington section of Philadelphia on July 31, 2017. #
Spencer Platt / Getty -
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Workers start to clear an area near what was a heroin-shooting gallery in the Kensington section of Philadelphia on July 31, 2017. Hundreds of outreach workers, city employees and Conrail workers started to clear an area of heroin users from a stretch of train tracks today as part of a long-anticipated clean-up of one of the largest open-air drug markets on the East Coast. #
Spencer Platt / Getty
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