Meet The Citigroup Trader Who Gets Prostitutes To Pose For Him

While most Wall Street investment bankers either head the Hamptons or a ski resort after a long week at the office, one Citigroup banker likes to unwind on the weekends by spending time with prostitutes in the Bronx.

Well, photographing them, that is.

From The New York Times' City Room blog:

As a foreign exchange trader for Citigroup, Chris Arnade, 46, makes a good income, and lives with his wife and three children in a spacious apartment he owns in Brooklyn Heights.

But during much of his spare time, he can be found driving the family minivan around Hunts Point in the Bronx, photographing prostitutes and documenting their lives.

Arnade's work can be found on his Flickr photostream where he posts a photograph and a description of his subject's story. "I post people's stories as they tell them to me. I am not a journalist. I don't try to verify, just listen," he writes underneath each picture.

According to the City Room blog, Arnade has been spending time in Hunts Point since 2010 when he was a volunteer at the Hunts Point Alliance for Children.

He's also very open about the fact that he's a Wall Streeter and that this is one of his hobbies, the report said.

Initially, some of his co-workers at Citi would tease him about his weekend endeavors, but now they're more supportive of his work, according to the City Room blog.

A Citigroup Trader Took These Pictures Of New York Prostitutes

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Wall Street is talking about a New York Times blog piece today featuring a Citigroup employee and his passion for photographing and documenting the stories of prostitutes in the Bronx.
Chris Arnade, 46, a forex trader spends a lot of his spare time in Hunts Point with his camera snapping pictures of not only prostitutes, but also homeless people and drug addicts. He also chronicles their stories usually writing underneath each photo, "I post people's stories as they tell them to me. I am not a journalist. I don't try to verify, just listen."

Vanessa: Hunts Point, Bronx

Vanessa: Hunts Point, Bronx

Vanessa, thirty-five, had three children with an abusive husband. She "lost her mind, started doing heroin," after losing the children, who were taken away and given to her mother. The drugs led to homelessness and prostitution. She grew up on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, but now spends her time in Hunts Point, "trying to survive everyday. Just doing whatever it takes." She was standing on the cold street corner looking for business, wearing only flip flops and smoking with her two friends. When I asked her how she wanted to be described, Mary Alice jumped in and said "She's the sweetest woman I know. She will give you the shirt off her back, if she has one on."

Cynthia: Hunts Point, Bronx

Cynthia: Hunts Point, Bronx

Cynthia, forty six, started working as a prostitute at the age of thirteen. She turned to the streets after battling her single mother in Brooklyn. "I didn't want to listen to her. She didn't give me any time." Cynthia is now the mother of fifteen children, eleven of whom are still alive. Her "baby" is sixteen, her oldest child thirty. We talked about the child prostitutes in Hunts Point now. She told me "Hunts Point isn't what it used to be, when the girls would stick together. Then came crack and heroin, that fucked up everything. A girl out there at that age. She got no choice. It ain't right."
Cynthia was strung out, agitated and slurring. When I asked her how she wanted to be described she looked me in the eye, thought for a second, then said "An honest person. Thats what I am. An honest person."
I post people's stories as they tell them to me. I am not a journalist. I don't try to verify, just listen.

Diane on Christmas eve: Hunts Point, Bronx

Diane on Christmas eve: Hunts Point, Bronx

I was worried I would not see Diane again, the police having nastily chased both of us away last time we talked. When we did run into each other, she apologized before I could, and suggested we finish taking pictures.
Seeing her in the cold, waiting for customers in the parking lot of a 7-11 at the end of Christmas Eve, got to me. The caustic attitude of the police before ("why would you want to photograph that ugly thing") and the indifference of the johns was too much. I took her picture, all the while feeling like crap.
Fill up on pump 7, three powerballs and a match five, Camel lights, and ten minutes with the hooker outside.

Sonia: Hunts Point, Bronx

Sonia: Hunts Point, Bronx

Sonia, forty-six years old and the mother of five, is a crack addict who "sells her body for drugs." Smart, polite, and well-spoken she told me and my friend Nina of her life-long battle with her addiction. She started when she was twenty-two, an overwhelmed single mother of three children working two jobs. She got into prostitution, becoming "a five dollar whore," trading sex for drugs with neighborhood dealers.
When we asked her how much money she needs a day for the drugs she said "as much as I can. I can't stop. I get some money, go and buy it, smoke crack, relax for thirty minutes. I have to get some more. It's non-stop. Until I keep walking back and forth and nothing nothing nothing gives, that's when I will say, 'God says go home.'" She has a "significant other," a wonderful man who's been with her for seventeen years. He does not drink, smoke, or do any drugs.
She has been clean before, something she says can only come from her. She started crying telling us of the eight-year period when she was clean. "I went to a program, mothers and children, everything was great, I came out, got a job, felt good, had money." She fell back four years ago.
When I asked her how she wanted to be described she responded, "I am good person with a very bad disease. If I had all the money in the world I would own all the crack in the world."
I post people's stories as they tell them to me. I am not a journalist. I don't try to verify, just listen.

Mary Alice: Hunts Point, Bronx

Mary Alice: Hunts Point, Bronx

'I got into hookin late, when I was thirty one. Developed a bad dope problem, lost my job, needed money. I once had a pimp, but no more. Pimp stands for "Put in my pocket," they just rip you off.' I asked her how she wanted to be described 'I am an African American woman, half Jamaican, mother of two wonderful children. I fell on hard times, but do what I got to do.'

Lisa P: Hunts Points, Bronx

Lisa P: Hunts Point, Bronx

Despite the weather, Lisa was in front of her house, looking for customers in the evening warehouse shift-change. She was cold and high. Her eyes shifted with each passing car, her feet stamping to stay warm.
Addicted to crack early, she turned to prostitution. 'I only use it now and then. I'm no longer an addict.' She is the mother of eight children, the first born when she was fifteen.
I asked her how she wanted to be described. She said 'I am conflicted, complex. I ain't bad. I got many things going on. People are not simple.'

Takeesha: Hunts Point, Bronx

Takeesha: Hunts Point, Bronx

Takeesha asked what I was doing in the neighborhood. I explained to her and then she asked to have her picture taken. I then asked her how she wanted to be described.
"As what I am. A prostitute, a mother of six, and a child of God"

Maribel: Hunts Point, Bronx

Maribel: Hunts Point, Bronx
Chris Arnade

Maribel approached me and my friend Nina, looking for fifty cents. I asked her if I could take her picture and listen to her story. She replied, "If I tell you my story, I´ll make you cry, but I wanna do the before and after, and I promise a year from today you are gonna take my picture again and I´m gonna be bloomin."
An addict (mostly crack), Maribel is the mother of five children. Her five-month old and her husband were killed in a car accident when she was just 19 years old. A year ago she lost her baby boy, James Alexander, to the courts and since then has been in a downward spiral, her health is failing and she is back into drugs. With tears in her eyes she said "You know how heartbreaking that is? I had five children and never had one been removed."
When I asked her about prostitution she said, she used to, but "now I get in the guys cars but I don't do nothing. I rob them, honest to God." When I told her I was going to write that she said, "I know who I am, I know where I stand, and I know where I´m heading. I can always hold my head up high."
I post people's stories as they tell them to me. I am not a journalist. I don't try to verify, just listen.
Pictures and stories posted with permission from Chris Arnade.

Want to see more of his work?

Flickr

Check Out Chris Arnade's "Faces of Addiction" on Flickr >>