MUSEUM EXHIBIT STUDIES PLIGHT OF THE HOMELESS

In 1994, Phillipe Bourgois started hanging out with the homeless
heroin users and crack smokers who lived in an encampment six blocks
from his home.

Then an anthropology professor at San Francisco State University,
Bourgois wanted to answer a basic question: "Should I be giving them
a quarter every time I see them?"

Introduced by a needle-exchange activist, Bourgois immediately was welcomed in.

"I told them I was an anthropology professor interested in writing
about their lives and, boom, they loved that idea," said Bourgois,
who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and is now studying the
Puerto Rican community in a drug-ravaged neighborhood in North Philadelphia.

"Because when you stop and think about it, they want to be taken
seriously," said Bourgois. "They want to be treated with respect and
they believe they have a lot to tell the rest of the country."

Bourgois and his research partner, Jeff Schonberg, spent 12 years on
the project, which culminated in a book and now an exhibit at the
Penn Museum in Philadelphia titled "Righteous Dopefiend:
Homelessness, Addiction and Poverty in Urban America."

On display now through May, the exhibit showcases a series of more
than 40 black-and-white photographs shot by Schonberg, a photographer
and doctoral candidate in medical anthropology at the University of
California, San Francisco and Berkeley.

Visitors walk down a hallway lined with Schonberg's striking
photographs, accompanied by Bourgois' field notes, excerpts of
recorded interviews and commentary.

"We learn about a society from the way it treats its most vulnerable
members," reads one placard. A soundtrack of a buzzing highway plays
in the background.

Schonberg's portraits document the intimate, hidden life of an addict
without glorifying drug use or making judgments. There are pictures
of people shooting up in a filthy, trashed shack; homeless friends
embracing in a hospital; a woman rooting through a Dumpster; a
Vietnam veteran searching for a place to display his American flag.

To get these photos, Bourgois and Schonberg spent every spare moment
they could with their research subjects, forming friendships and
working to get them help. Sometime, the researchers spent the night
and sometime just 20 minutes. They documented their health crises,
their premature aging processes and, for some, their deaths.

Bourgois asked Schonberg to join the project so he could take photographs.

"I was saying "People won't believe it if I just wrote it up. They
have to see it.' It's too much suffering. It's too filthy. There's
also too much humanity in it. There's moments of love and joy in the
mixture of these absolutely horrific, filthy scenes that you'd think
someone is exaggerating it if they wrote it out."

Whenever practical, the researchers tried to help the addicts get
involved with social services, an issue they also wanted to study. In
driving them to appointments, treatment, visits with social workers,
hospitals and welfare offices, they learned "how phenomenal the
barriers were to accessing those services and how poor their skills
were at negotiating with institutions," said Bourgois.

An amazing discovery Bourgois found was the absence of treatment on
demand "even when you desperately want it."

The study was funded by the National Institute of Health, which
wanted to know how to deal with high rates of disease such as
hepatitis C and HIV among heroin injectors. The book includes a
chapter listing 30 effective programs around the country aimed at
reducing the suffering of the homeless.

Visitors to the Penn Museum can vote and make a donation for one of
four Philadelphia programs highlighted in the exhibit, said Pam
Kosty, the museum's assistant director for public information.

They also can chalk comments about the "war on drugs" and universal
health care on the blackboard in the back of the exhibit. The museum
photographs the comments before erasing them.

In the coming months, Penn Museum will host panel discussions on the
issues raised by "Righteous Dopefiend."

As to whether or not he should give a quarter, Bourgois said that's
exactly what he gives to a panhandler.

"By giving a quarter, I show the homeless (person) that I recognize
that he's alive," said Bourgois. "If it's going for crack, a quarter
is no big deal. If it's going for food, so much the better."