Saying he is preserving "relics from a Lower East Side street drug culture that is gone," New York photographer Clayton Patterson has spent 20 years assembling a collection of about 2,000 discarded "dope bags," the New York Times reported Aug. 1.

Patterson's collection consists mostly of heroin bags distributed by dealers in lower Manhattan, although there are some from other parts of the city as well as a few cocaine bags. The collection includes bags branded to allow buyers to compare drugs sold by different dealers, with names like D.O.A., Body Bag, Poison, AIDS, FBI, and Secret Service.

"This collection reflects a major part of the underground culture in this neighborhood," Patterson said. "Dope dealing was one of the biggest parts of the neighborhood and one of the least documented."

Patterson has collected the bags in a series of albums that he says captures a particular period of time in the history of the Lower East Side. "I think evidence of that time deserves to be preserved," he said.