The story of Alice in Wonderland is one of the most reinterpreted in all of literary history. Now, an acclaimed NYC photographer is using it to highlight the opioid crisis, which has continued through the pandemic, and her own battle with an addiction to painkillers.

What You Need To Know

  • Celebrity Photographer Kimberly Butler decided to turn her art into activism after struggling with an addiction to pain killers

  • When Butler saw other artists take on the Sackler family for their pharmaceutical company profiting from the opioid epidemic, she came up with the idea for a photo essay

  • Butler came to the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park to be inspired for her project, which reinterprets the classic story as Alice falling down a rabbit hole of addiction

  • Butler cast Bill Pullman as the White Rabbit, radio personality Cooper Lawerence as The Red Queen, author Neil Gaiman as Lewis Carroll, and is still looking for a Mad Hatter

In Kimberly Butler's new photography series, the Queen Hearts is angry that she’s being exposed for her role in the opioid epidemic. She’s Big Pharma.

The series is called “Alice in Opioidland.” 

Butler found herself down the rabbit hole after suffering with chronic pain in her hand and arm. 

"So they sent me to doctor feel good and he’s the guy that put me on Oxycontin," Butler told us.

She struggled and beat an addiction to painkillers. 

When she saw artists like Nan Goldin leading protests against museums that took money from the Sackler family, which made a fortune by owning the company that manufactured the Oxycontin, Butler decided she too would turn her art into activism. 

Starting at the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park. 

"I actually came here as my first part of the research,” said Butler, standing in front of the statue. “I wanted to see how all this was laid out so I took the story that way. And Alice goes and takes a pill out of her mother's medicine cabinet and she falls down the hole.”
 


Drawing on her long career as a celebrity photographer, Butler cast radio personality Cooper Lawrence as the Red Queen, friend Anna Kief as Alice, and actor Bill Pullman as the White Rabbit, or in this case, cocaine. 
 


"These images of a young woman's trip down the rabbit hole, they reflect the surreal seduction a floating away from pain and then the horrors of addiction," Pullman said.  He added, "I think Kim is a unique artist that with her photographs she goes right into our subconscious. These images are like eyecandy, but also like a poison pill at the same time."
 


The series is unfolding on her website, and it’s already making a difference. 

"A couple people have written to me privately through my site and said, you know, ‘How can I get off drugs? Can you tell me where to go? How did you do it? How can I do it?’ And that means the world to me," said Butler.

Author Neil Gaiman will soon portray Alice’s author, Lewis Carrol, staging an intervention.

Butler's still looking for her Mad Hatter.