The Drake

From 2015 to 2019 I documented the lives of the people existing just above survival on one square block in the shadows of the Drake Motel in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s about a mile from downtown, located in an area that was ignored by developers. In recent years, Nashville has seen an incredible influx of money with a corresponding increase in real estate development and population growth. Somehow, this one little block had escaped notice.

I came upon the block by chance one day and tucked away in the block was a cafe. It was called Your Place Cafe, but it was more like a bar. Across the street from it was the Drake Motel, a relic from the 1940s. A sign said Stay where the stars stay. The cafe parking area was filled with work trucks and old cars. There were people coming and going. I’d been driving in search of some semblance of old Nashville, and the cafe looked like it might be the answer, circa 1950 maybe. So I stopped and went in.

I kept coming back to the bar. It became my home base. The regulars were friendly. I was comfortable. The environment pulled me in, the reception and acceptance pulled me in. I always carried my camera. I wanted to be transparent about why I was there and who I was. I’d watch from my swivel stool, talk to the group. I am naturally inquisitive about people, so conversations were plentiful and genuine. Gradually I became more interested in what was happening outside the cafe and around the Drake Motel. One day I was sitting there on my stool and I noticed the women outside. And the guys next to me, bellied up to the bar, were judging the women outside, making comments about them turning tricks. I am sensitive to the judging, comparing, the detaching. How we fall victim to look for a lesser person so that we feel better. How we think, At least I’m not that bad.

That’s when I knew where my story was. It wasn’t about the overdevelopment of my home city. It wasn’t about a forgotten bar or a vintage motel of the bygone years of Nashville. It was about the women walking the block. I wanted to know the women. I’m attracted to women. Not sexually, but I enjoy photographing them. I wanted to hear them. I wanted to get closer, to humanize them, to understand. So I ventured out to where the women were.

Addicts don’t want to connect. Being vulnerable is the last thing an addict wants. You can’t even know yourself. Slowly I became a familiar face and gained their trust. I invested my time in becoming part of the community. It was a common atmosphere of trauma, of stories that hadn’t been told. I’ve been sober since 2002, and I recognized the despair, the lie you tell yourself that keeps you in the cycle of addiction. How you keep lowering the bar to keep that one thing you believe is keeping you alive but it’s actually killing you.

Lack of education and parental involvement, poverty, emotional traumas, learning disabilities, a family history of addiction, genetic disposition – all are recognized as contributing factors to addiction. The only difference between me and these women was I had resources that upped my bottom. I had a support system, a family that brought me up a certain way. A different kind of education. I may not have the exact same experience, but I know what that feeling of addiction is. The specificity of the subject allowed me to delve deeply into a world that was far removed from my own life yet perilously close had I not found recovery. Nearly every day I immersed myself into their lives. I became part of the landscape, and my commonality allowed me access that many others could not or would not be given.

I believe we are at a critical point where we need to examine all aspects of our society, including those that make us uncomfortable. I am committed in my intent to push back against increasing culturally endorsed behavior to not acknowledge or, perhaps worse, punch down the marginalized. Many of the women in my pictures have lost their childhoods by being dominated by drugs or men or both. I am compelled to make them seen, to make them known, to look at them and find the moment where I can convey through shape, texture, color and light – the photograph, the fullness of their humanity.

My hope is that the images give space and allow for viewers to move closer and consider the lives of those looking back. That the intimacy of the portraits engages viewers in such a way that [they identify with those suffering and] contemplate the possibility that you may be more alike than unlike each other. I do think we all could learn from the addict, especially if we see the addict as ourselves.

The experience of photographing The Drake showed me that I’m more than just there to take pictures. I’m there to be taught. I wanted to unravel questions. How deep can I go? What more is there? What more can I learn? What more can I do to reach beyond the picture?

Since I completed this project, developers have descended on the area. Ultimately it was too close to downtown and too valuable a property. The Drake motel is an historic landmark so the building is still there, the paint peeling behind the neon, but Your Place Cafe is closed and boarded up now. There’s a chain-link fence around it, a big For Sale sign out front. A huge police headquarters has been built just down the street, and row upon row of tall skinny condos are going up for the 100 plus a day new residents moving to town. They’ve pushed many of the women and men I met further out of town, maybe two miles down the road, where they will be pretty much left alone and again, unseen.