In the 1970s, New York artist Joe Smith rented an apartment overlooking Fifth Avenue. In the years that followed, the rooms became a black hole of drug addiction, hopelessness, and squandered dreams.

A chance meeting with one of the residents drew photojournalist Jessica Dimmock to the apartment, where she embarked on an almost three-year journey into the lives of those living there.

Some estimates place numbers of heroin addicts in the United States at 600,000, with growing numbers of teenagers and young adults entering their ranks.

Focusing on three individuals, Dimmock watches and listens as the young people on the ninth floor fall into despair, then reflect on their choices and yearn for more. We are left with the reality of the drug's power, and the question: What does it take to kick the habit?

December 11, 2007