Photographer: H Fruchtman for the Health of Philadelphia Photo-Documentation Project.
About The Photograph
Philadelphia residents described the city's physical decline and stories of a fraying social fabric. Perhaps we should not have been surprised: Philadelphia hemorrhaged industrial jobs in the last half of the 20th century, and the aftermath is visible throughout the city. One third of the city's residents fled, leaving the city awash in abandoned homes and shops—more than in any other American city. Rooted in history, the problems remain entrenched today, threatening the vitality of the city and the health of its residents.
I was here, of course, in Philadelphia when there were the riots in the sixties. And the driving force with that event was...the people who were living in the community felt that they didn't have any ownership...so they just exploded. There was a disinvestment—period. The tax revenue from the residents there was not that high because it was the area of the city where a lot of the low-income residents reside. And it was massive, and of course when you look at how devastating the effect of change can be over time, you know, it gets worse. It just multiplies. It gets worse and worse and worse.
-Health of Philadelphia Participant
