Intimate Portraits Of People In Debt Shed Light On A Hidden American Crisis

Brittany Powell knows what it's like to be in debt.

After losing work during the 2008 financial crisis, the San-Francisco based photographer owed about $30,000 to the credit card companies she had used to keep her afloat.

"I had to put groceries on my credit card so I could pay my rent," she remembers. "All of my cash flow going to debt became this really stressful kind of juggling situation. It was definitely a really awful time in my life."

Powell filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

"Filing was a big deal because as soon as it was over with, I realized that debt is this really abstract thing," she recalls. "How you perceive it changes how it works. I had so much shame and stress associated with it, and all of that went away."

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As Powell started researching how debt works in the US, she quickly realized she wasn't the only one who had experienced its crushing weight. In fact, Americans altogether owe about $880 billion in credit card debt, with the average indebted household owing over $15,000.

This realization sparked her to embark on a multimedia photography project creating portraits of people in different kinds of debt across the US, interviewing them about how that obligation affects them on a day to day basis and how it makes them feel. So far, she's photographed 32 people around San Francisco, Portland, New York, and Detroit. Ultimately, she hopes to shoot 99 people - one for each of the 99%.

Here, Powell has shared some of the photographs and confessions from her project. You can support her mission to capture more stories of debt around the country on Kickstarter.