2019 Photo Contest, Contemporary Issues, 3rd Prize

Faces of an Epidemic

Photographer

Philip Montgomery

for The New Yorker

21 September, 2017

The body of someone who has died of a suspected overdose lies beside others in the Montgomery County coroner’s morgue in Dayton, Ohio, USA. The morgue goes through periods of over capacity, when it has to rent refrigerated trailers for more space.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, more than 130 people a day in the US die after overdosing on opioids. President Donald Trump has declared the opioid epidemic a national public health emergency. The crisis has its roots in the 1990s, when pharmaceutical companies assured doctors that opioid pain relievers were not addictive. The firm Purdue Pharma, in particular, has been accused of aggressive marketing even when the effects of opioids were known. Increased prescription of opioids such as Oxycontin led to widespread misuse. Some people switched to heroin, which was cheaper, and later to synthetic opioids, which are more potent and more likely to lead to a fatal overdose. 

About the photographer

Philip Montgomery

Philip Montgomery is a native Californian living in New York City for the past decade. His work examines the social issues of our time, utilizing observational strategies of...

Technical information

Shutter Speed
1/200
Focal length
35 mm
F-Stop
f/11
ISO
400
Camera
Canon EOS 5D Mark IV

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