I don’t know if I’m more sociological or more art. I try to satisfy both by asking questions. For years I would photograph falling-down ceilings and give it to the families and they would give it to the Board of Health or… And it was fixed and it embarrassed me, actually. Here you’ve got a white person from the outside and I would always say, when I called someone… “I’m Professor Stummer.” And it works. “There’s no heat here. You’ve got to do something here.” The people would be complaining forever and they never got anything done. And here I’d come along and it’s fixed.

Is this only because of race, do you think, or is it class as well?

It’s both… that’s the way we are in this country. They can tell I’m not from the ghetto and they associate white with being professional and that you’re involved with something. Actually, I was telling someone the other day… a white person is safer in a black ghetto than a black person is. Because black people see me, or a white person, as connected. Social services, DYFS, police, a nun, whatever. They make that connection. So, they’ll leave you alone more than they will a black person. I always thought about that.

When you make these calls…

You have to make fifty. The telephone is in a closet somewhere and no one is at the other end of it. It wears me out. How can a person who’s under this daily crisis and had to go to a payphone deal with this? I mean, come on, it’s impossible. That’s why these landlords and truckers who come in and dump things in the middle of the night in the lots and the children play.

I call to see if it’s contaminated or not. That’s why they get away with it, because no one’s going to complain. They have so much… they’re sick, they’re dealing with everything. They landlords are horrendous. They get away with it. But if the landlords even see me photographing… even see me… it’s fixed, like that. Because someone is watching and when someone is watching, things get done. Wonderful works… seeing that I gave prints to the families… it was so effective. But I’ve heard so many horror stories. I’m not about fairy tales. I know what’s going on. Someone’s making money and it’s corrupt and the families are suffering. And it doesn’t have to be. And it breaks my heart, really.

So, has anything changed from say 1980 until 2009?

No. No. Nothing. They’ve got a few houses they built there that the people who live in this environment can’t afford, so they’re always swept away. I spent time in Stella Wright Housing Project which the residents called “Hoodlum City.” I was just doing my archives and was just scanning those prints in yesterday.

When you look at these children… it was so painful for me to even look at. You look at these expressions… you don’t see expressions like that in the suburbs on children.

You don’t. I thought all you’ve got to do is see it. At the beginning I thought, all you’ve got to do is see it. But it doesn’t work like that. I thought I was going to change the world. But Stella Wright had to be one of the most horrible places to live that I have ever, ever experienced. They’ve bulldozed it now, but that’s not the point. That’s what they do, they blow it up and they think that something is solved… “Problem’s gone now, blew it up, gone.” The pictures I have of it… there were open drugs, the first floor they used as a shooting gallery for practice. Rapes were rampant. The families had to live in these conditions. So, I’m going to go in there now, right, I’m invited in because Tania’s brother is on the 10th floor. But I want to see… I have a strong curiosity also.

She took my camera gear and wrapped it in rags and she carried it. She signaled to her brother on the tenth floor that we were coming in. Because if you’re not up there in a certain amount of minutes, they’re going to come looking for you. So then we went in.

I have a strong fear of elevators… I don’t like it… I’m kind of claustrophobic, but I do anything if I have to… if my passion overcomes my fear. We went in, the door closed. Thank God… We’ve come this far… Tania said, “Forget it… see that opening on top of the elevator… the shaft I guess they call it… the hoodlums are up there and when the door closes they jump down and take what they want.” I wish you hadn’t told me that. I was devastated. The photographs of the children… I wrote the stories of what they told me.

It was such a dungeon… It was such a horrendous dungeon. The photographs are very clear, and I said: “What is our environment… how does it affect us?” How is it everyday, going through this dungeon, seeing people bleeding. Seeing people coming after you with a knife, and beating you up and trying to sell you pills… no safety whatsoever… what does that do to you? You know, I want people to think about this. Because we’re so safe… you cannot go outside. There is no such thing as a backyard… there isn’t any. You’re always ready to die. People are ready to die or lose their children. Every time their children leave the door, they pray that they’ll see them again. What kind of a horror is this to live under… and this is America? Come on; and it doesn’t have to be, you know. We could put up security at the stadium there, and give people a chance with education. I know children told me every story. It’s all wrong, it’s all backward.

This one young man whom I photographed forever… it kind of breaks your heart because they’re so trusting and they’re so nice… until they see the reality and then they realize there’s no goal, nothing’s going to happen, their dreams are not going to come true and then they change and I photograph that change. In their eyes especially.

He couldn’t read and when the teacher would pick on him, and all the kids would laugh at him, and he got in fights and the teacher would expel him… Why he had fights is really the question and it kept on till he dropped out of school as soon as he could. The streets got him. At sixteen he allowed me to photograph him, this last photograph… he was holding his baby son. He thought I was totally out of my mind. I always told him, You look just like an African king to me: you are elegant, you are gorgeous… he did and he thought I was totally insane, but you can see from the pictures… that’s exactly what he looked like. And he’s in jail… he’s been in jail for a long time. I think he shot a cop or tried to or… His anger… and I saw the police humiliate him… they do that with the little kids.

They humiliate them. They go in and they make them drop their pants. They’re eight, nine years old, to check them for drugs and then they put cuffs on them and then after they have their fun let them go. This creates rage. It goes from anger to rage… and it’s in them. You can’t do things like that. You can’t have these bully cops… I’m not saying there aren’t good ones. I’ve met them; I had them in my class. But there are bullies too. Bullies do a lot of damage, a great deal. You need to get rid of those. That’s what I saw… I tried to portray it and photograph it and show it as clear as I could. I’m done. [laughs]