John Blue
Image – “Ana” Ana with Tattoo” ink jet print 23” x 23” 2022, $1,000.00

You Never Tell Me You Love Me
    Hunt’s Point, a neighborhood of New York’s Bronx borough, is one of the last remaining areas in
the city where the sex trade still takes place openly on the street. The images in You Never Tell Me
You Love Me explore the rough, troubled environment in which this industry thrives, focusing on the
daily lives of the people who inhabit it. The projects goal is to provide a meaningful glimpse into this
illicit world. It was inspired by photography I had previously done in Brooklyn’s East New York,
long considered the borough’s most desperate neighborhood. I found then, as I have now, that the
more time I spent in the area, the more open my subjects became with me: more secrets and insights
where provided.
    I visited Hunt’s Point every week over a period of four months, spending full days photographing
my subjects in front of bright, paint-splattered walls, huge dirty trucks, forlorn train tracks and
ramshackle fences, as well as inside “quick sheet” motels, and the single room dwellings, where some
of them lived. I often accompanied them on their outings to the locations where they purchased
narcotics, and they often asked to be photographed as they got high. Hoods pulled up over their
heads, they smoked crack in the middle of the sidewalk, and injected heroin while hiding behind the
commercial trucks scattered throughout the area.
    My subjects live on the fringes of society. They are discounted, disenfranchised. Most come from
backgrounds shaped by poverty and crime. In a country where the income gap between the wealthy
and the poor continues to widen, this experience often leads to desperation, despair, drug use, and
other dysfunctional behavior. Lack of access to adequate health care and safe housing exacerbates the problem.
In You Never Tell Me You Love Me, I want to recognize these struggling people, to validate their humanity,
and to bring attention to their plight.