A ninth-floor apartment Manhattan New York by Jessica Dimmock Photography

The Ninth Floor by Jessica Dimmock & the slideshow by The New York Times & lees meer ...
In 2004, anywhere from 20 to 30 young addicts lived on the ninth floor of an elegant narrow building overlooking Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The squatters had turned the sprawling apartment into a dark, desperate and chaotic place. People hustled, scored, shot and smoked wherever they could. Friends conned each other for their next hit. They slept on piles of clothes on the floor. The power was shut off; the bathroom unusable; the kitchen filled with garbage. Anything of value was sold off. For nearly three years, Jessica Dimmock followed this crew documenting what happened to them after eviction, how they fought to get clean, sank deeper into addiction, went to jail, started families and struggled to survive.

Jessica Dimmock – The Ninth Floor14 March - 1 June 2008

Foam presents an exhibition of work by the young American photographer Jessica Dimmock (b. 1978). In 2006 in Milan she won the first F Award for socially-engaged photography for her series entitled The Ninth Floor. This disturbing portrait features a group of young heroin addicts living in a ninth-floor apartment in Manhattan, New York. Dimmock takes a disconcertingly close view of her subject, at the same time sympathetic and ruthless. The result is a series that centres on human emotions, in which despair makes way for anger, reconciliation and then bliss in quick tempo. In addition to The Ninth Floor the show also features a short film about this project, including interviews and video recordings.

Jessica Dimmock charted the lives of the people living in this ninth-floor flat in Manhattan apartment for almost three years. They are addicts, whose everyday lives are filled with buying and selling drugs, sleeping, rowing and sex.

When she was a child, Dimmock’s father also wrestled with drug addiction. Her sense of recognition gave her a special connection with this lonely, isolated community. Dimmock focused on the emotional and social side of their life. The result is a series of intense and innovative images with an intimate and simultaneously unpolished feel.

One influence on Dimmock’s work is film. Her cinematic sense is clearly evident in the way she portrays the space in the apartment. The minimal and often stratified lighting accentuates the sense of unease that The Ninth Floor exudes. Dimmock shot her pictures using only the lighting in the flat: the light of the television screen or a mobile phone.

The tragic intimacy of The Ninth Floor leaves the viewer with a mixture of emotions.
Jessica Dimmock (b. 1978) lives in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated in 2005 at the International Center of Photography (ICP) following a Bachelor in Sociology and Anthropology in 2000 and a Master in Educational Studies. Between 2000 and 2004 she worked as a teacher at a secondary school and on educational programmes for homeless children.

In 2006, The Ninth Floor won both Magnum Photos' Inge Morath Prize, the Marty Forsher Fellowship for Humanistic Photography of PDN/Parsons. With this series Dimmock also won the first edition of the prestigious F Award. This International Award for concerned photography was created by Fabrica, the communication Research Center of Benetton Group and Forma, Centro Internazionale di Fotografia of Milano – created by Fondazione della Sera and Contrasto.

She has published in Aperture, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Fortune, Newsweek, New York Magazine and Fade. Read more ...

The exhibition is a Forma production. The book The Ninth Floor is published by Contrasto (2007).
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The Ninth Floor can be seen from 14 March to 1 June 2008 at Foam Photography Museum Amsterdam. Open daily 10.00-18.00, Thurs/Fri 10.00-21.00. Tickets: € 7.00 / info: +31 (0)20 5516500 / www.foam.nl