this is what i am doing now for school. date sept 19th.
We will be looking at different photography masters. Choose one to discuss. What is it that makes their work so special? Look at the works of this artist relative to his/her historical, social and cultural sphere. Then look at your own work and tell us about your current social and cultural sphere and how this is reflected in your work.

Some suggestions: Minor White, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ansel Adams, Yousuf Karsh, Chris Jordan, Diane Arbus, Andy Warhol, Lester Hayes, Ciro Totku, Nicholas Nixon, Alfred Stieglitz or choose anyone who has inspired you.

• What genre is the photographer considered to be working in?
• What is their style?
• What major event may have help to shape his/her work?
• How does the chosen photographer’s work fit into the time they were/are producing their work?
• Are/were they considered ahead of their time?
• Does/Will their work stand up to the test of time?


i chose:
margaret morton

publisher of many books and photo compositions..Margaret Morton has spent the past decade documenting the homeless of Manhattan and the ephemeral shelters they have built on dormant and appropriated real estate. Their presence constitutes a small but disproportionately jarring feature of the cityscape, yet within it she has found an unexpected abundance of beauty, serenity and invention. Morton has photographed on the upper west side of New York City and throughout the lower east side, where she has lived since 1986. Her personal engagement with her subjects involves exploration of character and history and is essential to her method. The philosophical narratives with which she is rewarded can be breathtakingly succinct and are juxtaposed with the photographs in her publications; these stories infuse and leaven the black depths shared by Morton's visual vocabulary and the actual sites and situations.

Morton received an undergraduate degree in art from Kent State University and completed graduate studies at Yale University. Studies in photography paved the way for the homeless work, while her concentration in design informs her organization and structure of the project's voluminous material. Morton's embrace of photography as a tool for social awareness and change relates to the tradition of photographer-reformers like Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis, whose unflinching photographs of sweatshops and slums led to labor and housing reforms early in this century. Like them, she seeks to position her work in the public eye and in sociopolitical discourse and has exhibited, lectured and published widely. Since homelessness is not tied to geography, Morton's work has graced exhibitions and seminar agendas around the globe.

Morton is an Associate Professor of Art at Cooper Union and has taught at Yale and SUNY Purchase. Her work has been reviewed and published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The London Times and Die Zeit, in addition to numerous arts publications, including Aperture and Artforum. Two books have been published from her ongoing project, "The Architecture of Despair": Transitory Gardens, Uprooted Lives and The Tunnel: The Underground Homeless of New York City. Morton has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the Graham Foundation, among others.

Ultimately, Morton's stringently unsentimental photographs and texts lay bare common denominators regarding physical need and spiritual longing. They also reveal the dignity inherent in human perseverance.

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