"Issues that are all too familiar — drugs, crime, teenage pregnancy, the frustrations caused by government red tape — take on new immediacy thanks to the extraordinary intimacy of Mr. Wiseman's working methods."

"For every long-lens shot of men on the corner snorting cocaine, there are shots of chess games, sewing circles and laundry hung lovingly on the line. For every bureaucratese-speaking clerk from CHA, there is a sympathetic plumber or a roach exterminator who can’t do enough for an appreciative tenant.… Wiseman… has an eye for subtle social distinctions."