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If you’ve been using the excuse that you’re not making powerful shiznit because you’re not a full-time photographer, take a lesson from this guy.

Chris Arnade is 46, (Twitter @chris_arnade) lives in New York, and is a banker by day. But it’s not his ability to count money that’s gotten him a lot of press lately…it’s his hobby, which is photographing the faces of drug addicts (mostly prostitutes) in the Bronx. And they are real and very simple and touching and hard. And it’s not his day job. It’s just what he does to unwind.

Flip through some of my favorite shots of Chris’s on the image tabs above and see what he does in his spare time. The extended captions below the images are as simple, yet priceless, as the images.

I am not a journalist, I don’t verify, just listen. Its very easy ito simply run with your crowd, to not explore the amazing diversity and perspectives that are offered. Its also very easy to ignore others. By not looking, by not talking to them, we can often fall into constructing our own narrative that affirms our limited world view. What I am hoping to do, by allowing my subjects to share their dreams and burdens with the viewer and by photographing them with respect, is to show that everyone, regardless of their station in life, is as valid as anyone else.

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via his Flickr set, Faces of Addiction: