I Shoot Instax Photos That Document Victims of Violence in Chicago

I Shoot Instax Photos That Document Victims of Violence in Chicago

In 2016, there were 762 murders in Chicago, the most by far anywhere in the United States — more than the total of New York and Los Angeles combined.

via PetaPixel: https://petapixel.com/2017/12/29/shoot-instax-photos-document-victims-violence-chicago/

I started documenting their stories in Chicago over 6 months ago. It began because I felt the stories of the victims were too often being referred to as a statistic rather than a person, so I started visiting the places where they were killed. I wanted to know more about what happened to them, to somehow feel connected. Most of the time, there was a sense that it never even happened, even though a life had been taken there. I wanted to take a photograph in a compassionate way that would become a tangible memory from such tragic stories, connecting the victims as a person and not as a statistic.