East Village Squatters Lose a Leader
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
DESCRIPTIONPhotograph by Fly Michael Shenker in 1995, taking a break from doing some work in his squat on East Seventh Street.
Throughout much of the 1980s and ’90s, a certain segment of the East Village appeared to be in nearly perpetual rebellion. There were the squatters who took over abandoned city-owned buildings. There were the gardeners who reclaimed trash-strewn lots. And there were the anarchists and artists who declared rhetorical war on developers while holding roving protests and sometimes skirmishing with the police.
One of the people who seemed always to be at the center of such events was a wiry, bespectacled man named Michael Shenker, who arrived in the neighborhood as a teenager in the early 1970s and died on Saturday of liver failure at the age of 54. As word spread through the neighborhood that Mr. Shenker did not have long to live, a parade of visitors went to his apartment in a former squat on East Seventh Street. After he died, dozens of his comrades gathered there to fondly remember his many roles.
“Michael was like the hub of a lot of different circles,” Eric Rossi, a longtime friend said on Sunday night. “He was part of many groups and tied them all together.”
Mr. Shenker was an electrician, plumber and opera aficionado whom some described as the godfather of the East Village squatting movement. He was a regular at “soap box speakouts,” during which participants stood atop a milk crate on Avenue A and, in an East Village version of Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park in London, declaimed in loud voices on a variety of topics. He was querulous and opinionated and good-natured. Many police commanders and city officials considered him to be a disruptive rabble-rouser — he was arrested several times, at least — and his appetite for argument could try the patience of even his closest friends.
John R. Penley Mr. Shenker holding a sign at a protest against the Local Initiatives Support Corporation.
Mr. Shenker was perhaps best known in the neighborhood as a tactician who thought up ways to protect appropriated buildings and community gardens that were subject to eviction or bulldozing. Some of the projects he started ended up with narratives as dramatic any of the operas he loved.
He was one of the main organizers, for instance, of the occupation of a dilapidated former schoolhouse on East Fourth Street that a group of people decided to take over in the late 1980s and convert into housing for the homeless of Tompkins Square Park. The occupiers were eventually forced from the building, but they barricaded themselves inside for several weeks, helped by allies who crossed police lines at night and placed food and water in buckets surreptitiously lowered from windows.
He was also involved in buildings that the squatters hung onto, including one called Umbrella House on Avenue C, and 209 East Seventh Street, which was opened in 1985 and which Mr. Shenker moved into two years later. Soon afterward, he helped repair the building after a fire reduced nearly half of the structure to a framework of charred joists.
“For so many years, he single-mindedly pursued the goal of preserving those buildings,” said Seth Tobocman, an artist who described many of the battles surrounding the squats in a graphic novel titled “War in the Neighborhood” and included a character modeled after Mr. Shenker called the Maestro. “That was his focus.”
That persistence paid off in 2002, when the city agreed to legalize 11 surviving squatter buildings in the East Village, among them Mr. Shenker’s.
“We have weathered and survived the onslaught of gentrification,” he said then in an interview with The New York Times, “and due to our tenacity and adaptability, we’re still here.”
A few years earlier, Mr. Shenker had helped plan the defense of the Esperanza community garden on East Seventh Street, where more than 100 people locked themselves inside in an attempt to stop the Giuliani administration from destroying the garden and selling the lot to a developer.
Mr. Shenker, who had chained himself to a block of cement buried in the ground, promised to haunt the mayor “like the Furies from Greek mythology.”
Although that garden was not spared, the controversy over its razing helped lead to a settlement that removed hundreds of others from the auction block.
For years, Mr. Shenker limited his advocacy to neighborhood issues, but after the squats were preserved he widened his scope. In 2003 he organized demonstrations outside the United Nations against the impending war in Iraq. The following year, just before the Republican National Convention, the ABC news program “Nightline” broadcast Mr. Shenker’s photograph while reporting a story about people described as potentially dangerous. Friends said that he was angered by what he called an irresponsible assertion.
Eric Laursen, a writer and activist who worked with him during that time, said he was struck by the degree to which Mr. Shenker’s views were shaped by deeply felt sentiments.
“It wasn’t just about being right or doing the right thing — it was about throwing yourself into it and letting your emotions being part of what pushed you,” Mr. Laursen said. “He wanted to be one of the people who was infusing his passion into everyone else, chanting and waving his arm and being infectious.”
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
My Photographer, Margaret Morton
photos, and critical critique
selected from the books by Margaret Morton:
from left:
the tunnel 1995
transitory gardens 1993
fragile dwellings 2000
My critique goes something like this:
Margaret Morton's photographs are beyond art. They are documentation. Therefore the critique presented is taken with a grain of salt, because of the underlying subject matter.
for these photos-
The photo from Fragile dwellings, I liked the angle, and the backround feel of the city at large, as well knowing where the space lies in proximity to the bridge. The black and white photo style, again lends itself to shadow and rawness in all three photos.
For The Tunnels, I admire the light effects. All this photo is missing is the stench of the tunnels. That sweet-sour smell of decay and garbage, with metallic and wet mixed in for good measure.
Transitory Gardens, is great portraiture. Margaret Morton studies her subject in his own standing, which is important, and captures the pride.
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:43 PM 0 comments
week 3 assignment
3 photos, and critical critique
selected from the books by Margaret Morton:
from left:
transitory gardens 1993
the tunnel 1995
fragile dwellings 2000
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:15 PM 0 comments
Fragile Dwelling
Photographs and text
by Margaret Morton
Introduction by Alan Trachtenberg
[Aperture, fall 2000]
128 pages, 90 photographs
A portion of the proceeds from the book, Fragile Dwelling, will benefit Coalition for the Homeless, New York.
You may drive by here and see that they are shabby, but I think that if you look again you see this person took the time to build a place that could be comfortable for himself. If you saw it up close, you could see that we’d turned it into a home. . . . The person who will take the time to build for himself is the person who still has an interest in himself.
— Douglas, resident of the East River encampment
Over a ten-year period, Margaret Morton documented the inventive ways in which homeless people in New York City have created not only places to live but communities offering a sense of pride, place, and individuality. Fragile Dwelling depicts a world immediately recognizable to anyone who has lived in, or even visited, a major American city. Yet these photographs tell a story far more profound than most of us, streaming past on our way from home to office, would ever imagine. Together with compelling oral histories recorded by the photographer, they demand that we confront not only the bleak consequences of economic inequality in America, but also the diverse and wonderful humanity of those who, in the midst of a booming housing market for developers, strive to create shelters for themselves from the most meager resources.
To Morton, these assemblages of crates, scrap wood, broken furniture, and other debris of the modern city are not an eyesore to be quickly glimpsed and then forgotten. They are in fact, as she shows us, homes—laboriously and ingeniously built, little by little, piece by piece. Most of these structures exist no longer—whether vacated as a result of changing economic conditions, destroyed by arson, or razed by police bulldozers.
In these photographs we visit Mr. Lee, a Chinese immigrant whose house,
a perpetual work-in-progress, was constructed without the aid of boards or nails, instead held together by an elaborate system of knots. We meet the residents of Bushville in lower Manhattan, whose improvised casitas, with their porches and flags and decorations, recall the Puerto Rican villages where many of them were born. We meet a community perched along the seawall between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, where residents look out over a peaceful, luminous East River.
The river offered me the first stability I’ve had since 1988. From here you can see the mistakes you made, you can see the things that led you to be here.
— Mizan, resident of the East River encampment
Within these miraculous constructions we find people sustained in exceedingly difficult times by an abiding faith: faith in their ability to make something of value from their lives and their surroundings; faith in the power of community; religious faith sometimes.
When you want something, no matter if it weighs two hundred pounds or three hundred, you can carry, because God helps you. With God you can carry everything.
— Hector, resident of Bushville
Alan Trachtenberg, Neil Grey Professor of English and American Studies at Yale University, is the author of numerous books on photography including Reading American Photographs: Image as History, From Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (Hill &Wang). He writes and lectures often on American literature, photography, and cultural history.
Reviews for exhibitions of Fragile Dwelling
Other books: The Tunnel, Transitory Gardens
Fragile Dwelling has been partially supported by The Buhl Foundation, Coalition for the Homeless, and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Margaret Morton's ongoing project has been partially supported by grants from the Graham Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:11 PM 0 comments
The Tunnel
Margaret Morton
[Yale University Press, fall 1995]
160 pages, 60 photographs
One of the oldest surviving homeless communities in New York City stretches for two and a half miles underground on the Upper West Side. Hidden from public view in an abandoned freight tunnel, this habitation existed for sixteen years before it was discovered by Amtrak crews renewing track for passenger service between Pennsylvania Station and Albany. Most of the residents of the fifty-block-long community refused to leave, and the population has continued to increase as the more visible homeless encampments are demolished by the city.
The earliest tunnel residents live alongside the tracks in cinderblock structures originally built as storage facilities. More recent tunnel dwellers have built plywood shanties or perched themselves on narrow ledges. Shafts of light angle through air vents. Dwellings are clustered around these points of entry and on the light-washed walls are images and writing left by graffiti artists.
An underground water source was shut off in the early 1980's. Tunnel residents are now forced to walk miles below and above ground to obtain water and food. Meals are cooked over fires that also serve to combat the damp chill. Residents recycle the discarded furniture and cookware of nearby apartment dwellers to create their own homes.
Among the tunnel residents was John, who wandered in, searching for a safe place to sleep after being attacked on a park bench.
So I kept walking to the back and found this house and started to clean it and fix it up. They were there for the workers.... I had to walk around the street at night to look for things that I wanted to put into it. And sometimes I had to carry it ten to fifteen blocks just to get it down.
John stayed for over twenty years, taking into his care fifteen abandoned cats and three stray dogs.
Bernard entered the tunnel in 1985. He supports himself by collecting cans in the early morning hours for redemption at a recycling center. Known as "The Lord of the Tunnel," Bernard became the spokesperson for the tunnel residents when they were threatened with eviction in 1991.
I have no regrets.... This existence has done so much for me. It's taken me from the vanity.... People think it's about laying back and being shiftless out here and it's not. A day-to-day existence can be most intense.
— Bernard
Cathy came to the tunnel in 1986 to join Joe, a Vietnam veteran she had met in Riverside Park. Disabled with asthma and epilepsy, Cathy had left her job in a law firm after her husband had died and her child had been killed. Although Joe had moved into one of the concrete rooms of the tunnel in 1973, it was not until Cathy arrived that he painted, added a door, and salvaged furniture. Cathy found pillows and blankets along the streets.
All the people "upstairs" have to do is get up out of their warm bed and walk into the kitchen and make what they need. We got to get up and go in front of a fire; make sure you have your paper and your this and your that or you don't eat. There's no delivery trucks coming down here with wood and supplies. The garbage cans is where we find our stuff.
— Cathy
Cathy adopted eighteen stray cats and a dog named "Buddy."
I'm not going to bring a child into this. It's hard for me and Joe to manage now. We're gonna take care of a baby? What if I have a baby? They're gonna put me in a shelter. I'm not going to live in one of those places. That's why we're down here. I got my little family, and that's enough. If you're feeling bad, they make you feel better. They're not like people, they're not two-faced. So that why I love my animals.
— Cathy
Reviews for The Tunnel
Other books: Fragile Dwelling, Transitory Gardens
Publication of The Tunnel was partially supported by the New York Foundation on the Arts. Margaret Morton's ongoing project has been partially supported by grants from the Graham Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:08 PM 0 comments
selected from the books by Margaret Morton:
from left:
the tunnel 1995
transitory gardens 1993
fragile dwellings 2000
My critique goes something like this:
Margaret Morton's photographs are beyond art. They are documentation. Therefore the critique presented is taken with a grain of salt, because of the underlying subject matter.
for these photos-
The photo from Fragile dwellings, I liked the angle, and the backround feel of the city at large, as well knowing where the space lies in proximity to the bridge. The black and white photo style, again lends itself to shadow and rawness in all three photos.
For The Tunnels, I admire the light effects. All this photo is missing is the stench of the tunnels. That sweet-sour smell of decay and garbage, with metallic and wet mixed in for good measure.
Transitory Gardens, is great portraiture. Margaret Morton studies her subject in his own standing, which is important, and captures the pride.
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:43 PM 0 comments
week 3 assignment
3 photos, and critical critique
selected from the books by Margaret Morton:
from left:
transitory gardens 1993
the tunnel 1995
fragile dwellings 2000
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:15 PM 0 comments
Fragile Dwelling
Photographs and text
by Margaret Morton
Introduction by Alan Trachtenberg
[Aperture, fall 2000]
128 pages, 90 photographs
A portion of the proceeds from the book, Fragile Dwelling, will benefit Coalition for the Homeless, New York.
You may drive by here and see that they are shabby, but I think that if you look again you see this person took the time to build a place that could be comfortable for himself. If you saw it up close, you could see that we’d turned it into a home. . . . The person who will take the time to build for himself is the person who still has an interest in himself.
— Douglas, resident of the East River encampment
Over a ten-year period, Margaret Morton documented the inventive ways in which homeless people in New York City have created not only places to live but communities offering a sense of pride, place, and individuality. Fragile Dwelling depicts a world immediately recognizable to anyone who has lived in, or even visited, a major American city. Yet these photographs tell a story far more profound than most of us, streaming past on our way from home to office, would ever imagine. Together with compelling oral histories recorded by the photographer, they demand that we confront not only the bleak consequences of economic inequality in America, but also the diverse and wonderful humanity of those who, in the midst of a booming housing market for developers, strive to create shelters for themselves from the most meager resources.
To Morton, these assemblages of crates, scrap wood, broken furniture, and other debris of the modern city are not an eyesore to be quickly glimpsed and then forgotten. They are in fact, as she shows us, homes—laboriously and ingeniously built, little by little, piece by piece. Most of these structures exist no longer—whether vacated as a result of changing economic conditions, destroyed by arson, or razed by police bulldozers.
In these photographs we visit Mr. Lee, a Chinese immigrant whose house,
a perpetual work-in-progress, was constructed without the aid of boards or nails, instead held together by an elaborate system of knots. We meet the residents of Bushville in lower Manhattan, whose improvised casitas, with their porches and flags and decorations, recall the Puerto Rican villages where many of them were born. We meet a community perched along the seawall between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, where residents look out over a peaceful, luminous East River.
The river offered me the first stability I’ve had since 1988. From here you can see the mistakes you made, you can see the things that led you to be here.
— Mizan, resident of the East River encampment
Within these miraculous constructions we find people sustained in exceedingly difficult times by an abiding faith: faith in their ability to make something of value from their lives and their surroundings; faith in the power of community; religious faith sometimes.
When you want something, no matter if it weighs two hundred pounds or three hundred, you can carry, because God helps you. With God you can carry everything.
— Hector, resident of Bushville
Alan Trachtenberg, Neil Grey Professor of English and American Studies at Yale University, is the author of numerous books on photography including Reading American Photographs: Image as History, From Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (Hill &Wang). He writes and lectures often on American literature, photography, and cultural history.
Reviews for exhibitions of Fragile Dwelling
Other books: The Tunnel, Transitory Gardens
Fragile Dwelling has been partially supported by The Buhl Foundation, Coalition for the Homeless, and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Margaret Morton's ongoing project has been partially supported by grants from the Graham Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:11 PM 0 comments
The Tunnel
Margaret Morton
[Yale University Press, fall 1995]
160 pages, 60 photographs
One of the oldest surviving homeless communities in New York City stretches for two and a half miles underground on the Upper West Side. Hidden from public view in an abandoned freight tunnel, this habitation existed for sixteen years before it was discovered by Amtrak crews renewing track for passenger service between Pennsylvania Station and Albany. Most of the residents of the fifty-block-long community refused to leave, and the population has continued to increase as the more visible homeless encampments are demolished by the city.
The earliest tunnel residents live alongside the tracks in cinderblock structures originally built as storage facilities. More recent tunnel dwellers have built plywood shanties or perched themselves on narrow ledges. Shafts of light angle through air vents. Dwellings are clustered around these points of entry and on the light-washed walls are images and writing left by graffiti artists.
An underground water source was shut off in the early 1980's. Tunnel residents are now forced to walk miles below and above ground to obtain water and food. Meals are cooked over fires that also serve to combat the damp chill. Residents recycle the discarded furniture and cookware of nearby apartment dwellers to create their own homes.
Among the tunnel residents was John, who wandered in, searching for a safe place to sleep after being attacked on a park bench.
So I kept walking to the back and found this house and started to clean it and fix it up. They were there for the workers.... I had to walk around the street at night to look for things that I wanted to put into it. And sometimes I had to carry it ten to fifteen blocks just to get it down.
John stayed for over twenty years, taking into his care fifteen abandoned cats and three stray dogs.
Bernard entered the tunnel in 1985. He supports himself by collecting cans in the early morning hours for redemption at a recycling center. Known as "The Lord of the Tunnel," Bernard became the spokesperson for the tunnel residents when they were threatened with eviction in 1991.
I have no regrets.... This existence has done so much for me. It's taken me from the vanity.... People think it's about laying back and being shiftless out here and it's not. A day-to-day existence can be most intense.
— Bernard
Cathy came to the tunnel in 1986 to join Joe, a Vietnam veteran she had met in Riverside Park. Disabled with asthma and epilepsy, Cathy had left her job in a law firm after her husband had died and her child had been killed. Although Joe had moved into one of the concrete rooms of the tunnel in 1973, it was not until Cathy arrived that he painted, added a door, and salvaged furniture. Cathy found pillows and blankets along the streets.
All the people "upstairs" have to do is get up out of their warm bed and walk into the kitchen and make what they need. We got to get up and go in front of a fire; make sure you have your paper and your this and your that or you don't eat. There's no delivery trucks coming down here with wood and supplies. The garbage cans is where we find our stuff.
— Cathy
Cathy adopted eighteen stray cats and a dog named "Buddy."
I'm not going to bring a child into this. It's hard for me and Joe to manage now. We're gonna take care of a baby? What if I have a baby? They're gonna put me in a shelter. I'm not going to live in one of those places. That's why we're down here. I got my little family, and that's enough. If you're feeling bad, they make you feel better. They're not like people, they're not two-faced. So that why I love my animals.
— Cathy
Reviews for The Tunnel
Other books: Fragile Dwelling, Transitory Gardens
Publication of The Tunnel was partially supported by the New York Foundation on the Arts. Margaret Morton's ongoing project has been partially supported by grants from the Graham Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:08 PM 0 comments
My Photographer, Margaret Morton
photos, and critical critique
selected from the books by Margaret Morton:
from left:
the tunnel 1995
transitory gardens 1993
fragile dwellings 2000
My critique goes something like this:
Margaret Morton's photographs are beyond art. They are documentation. Therefore the critique presented is taken with a grain of salt, because of the underlying subject matter.
for these photos-
The photo from Fragile dwellings, I liked the angle, and the backround feel of the city at large, as well knowing where the space lies in proximity to the bridge. The black and white photo style, again lends itself to shadow and rawness in all three photos.
For The Tunnels, I admire the light effects. All this photo is missing is the stench of the tunnels. That sweet-sour smell of decay and garbage, with metallic and wet mixed in for good measure.
Transitory Gardens, is great portraiture. Margaret Morton studies her subject in his own standing, which is important, and captures the pride.
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:43 PM 0 comments
week 3 assignment
3 photos, and critical critique
selected from the books by Margaret Morton:
from left:
transitory gardens 1993
the tunnel 1995
fragile dwellings 2000
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:15 PM 0 comments
Fragile Dwelling
Photographs and text
by Margaret Morton
Introduction by Alan Trachtenberg
[Aperture, fall 2000]
128 pages, 90 photographs
A portion of the proceeds from the book, Fragile Dwelling, will benefit Coalition for the Homeless, New York.
You may drive by here and see that they are shabby, but I think that if you look again you see this person took the time to build a place that could be comfortable for himself. If you saw it up close, you could see that we’d turned it into a home. . . . The person who will take the time to build for himself is the person who still has an interest in himself.
— Douglas, resident of the East River encampment
Over a ten-year period, Margaret Morton documented the inventive ways in which homeless people in New York City have created not only places to live but communities offering a sense of pride, place, and individuality. Fragile Dwelling depicts a world immediately recognizable to anyone who has lived in, or even visited, a major American city. Yet these photographs tell a story far more profound than most of us, streaming past on our way from home to office, would ever imagine. Together with compelling oral histories recorded by the photographer, they demand that we confront not only the bleak consequences of economic inequality in America, but also the diverse and wonderful humanity of those who, in the midst of a booming housing market for developers, strive to create shelters for themselves from the most meager resources.
To Morton, these assemblages of crates, scrap wood, broken furniture, and other debris of the modern city are not an eyesore to be quickly glimpsed and then forgotten. They are in fact, as she shows us, homes—laboriously and ingeniously built, little by little, piece by piece. Most of these structures exist no longer—whether vacated as a result of changing economic conditions, destroyed by arson, or razed by police bulldozers.
In these photographs we visit Mr. Lee, a Chinese immigrant whose house,
a perpetual work-in-progress, was constructed without the aid of boards or nails, instead held together by an elaborate system of knots. We meet the residents of Bushville in lower Manhattan, whose improvised casitas, with their porches and flags and decorations, recall the Puerto Rican villages where many of them were born. We meet a community perched along the seawall between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, where residents look out over a peaceful, luminous East River.
The river offered me the first stability I’ve had since 1988. From here you can see the mistakes you made, you can see the things that led you to be here.
— Mizan, resident of the East River encampment
Within these miraculous constructions we find people sustained in exceedingly difficult times by an abiding faith: faith in their ability to make something of value from their lives and their surroundings; faith in the power of community; religious faith sometimes.
When you want something, no matter if it weighs two hundred pounds or three hundred, you can carry, because God helps you. With God you can carry everything.
— Hector, resident of Bushville
Alan Trachtenberg, Neil Grey Professor of English and American Studies at Yale University, is the author of numerous books on photography including Reading American Photographs: Image as History, From Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (Hill &Wang). He writes and lectures often on American literature, photography, and cultural history.
Reviews for exhibitions of Fragile Dwelling
Other books: The Tunnel, Transitory Gardens
Fragile Dwelling has been partially supported by The Buhl Foundation, Coalition for the Homeless, and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Margaret Morton's ongoing project has been partially supported by grants from the Graham Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:11 PM 0 comments
The Tunnel
Margaret Morton
[Yale University Press, fall 1995]
160 pages, 60 photographs
One of the oldest surviving homeless communities in New York City stretches for two and a half miles underground on the Upper West Side. Hidden from public view in an abandoned freight tunnel, this habitation existed for sixteen years before it was discovered by Amtrak crews renewing track for passenger service between Pennsylvania Station and Albany. Most of the residents of the fifty-block-long community refused to leave, and the population has continued to increase as the more visible homeless encampments are demolished by the city.
The earliest tunnel residents live alongside the tracks in cinderblock structures originally built as storage facilities. More recent tunnel dwellers have built plywood shanties or perched themselves on narrow ledges. Shafts of light angle through air vents. Dwellings are clustered around these points of entry and on the light-washed walls are images and writing left by graffiti artists.
An underground water source was shut off in the early 1980's. Tunnel residents are now forced to walk miles below and above ground to obtain water and food. Meals are cooked over fires that also serve to combat the damp chill. Residents recycle the discarded furniture and cookware of nearby apartment dwellers to create their own homes.
Among the tunnel residents was John, who wandered in, searching for a safe place to sleep after being attacked on a park bench.
So I kept walking to the back and found this house and started to clean it and fix it up. They were there for the workers.... I had to walk around the street at night to look for things that I wanted to put into it. And sometimes I had to carry it ten to fifteen blocks just to get it down.
John stayed for over twenty years, taking into his care fifteen abandoned cats and three stray dogs.
Bernard entered the tunnel in 1985. He supports himself by collecting cans in the early morning hours for redemption at a recycling center. Known as "The Lord of the Tunnel," Bernard became the spokesperson for the tunnel residents when they were threatened with eviction in 1991.
I have no regrets.... This existence has done so much for me. It's taken me from the vanity.... People think it's about laying back and being shiftless out here and it's not. A day-to-day existence can be most intense.
— Bernard
Cathy came to the tunnel in 1986 to join Joe, a Vietnam veteran she had met in Riverside Park. Disabled with asthma and epilepsy, Cathy had left her job in a law firm after her husband had died and her child had been killed. Although Joe had moved into one of the concrete rooms of the tunnel in 1973, it was not until Cathy arrived that he painted, added a door, and salvaged furniture. Cathy found pillows and blankets along the streets.
All the people "upstairs" have to do is get up out of their warm bed and walk into the kitchen and make what they need. We got to get up and go in front of a fire; make sure you have your paper and your this and your that or you don't eat. There's no delivery trucks coming down here with wood and supplies. The garbage cans is where we find our stuff.
— Cathy
Cathy adopted eighteen stray cats and a dog named "Buddy."
I'm not going to bring a child into this. It's hard for me and Joe to manage now. We're gonna take care of a baby? What if I have a baby? They're gonna put me in a shelter. I'm not going to live in one of those places. That's why we're down here. I got my little family, and that's enough. If you're feeling bad, they make you feel better. They're not like people, they're not two-faced. So that why I love my animals.
— Cathy
Reviews for The Tunnel
Other books: Fragile Dwelling, Transitory Gardens
Publication of The Tunnel was partially supported by the New York Foundation on the Arts. Margaret Morton's ongoing project has been partially supported by grants from the Graham Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:08 PM 0 comments
selected from the books by Margaret Morton:
from left:
the tunnel 1995
transitory gardens 1993
fragile dwellings 2000
My critique goes something like this:
Margaret Morton's photographs are beyond art. They are documentation. Therefore the critique presented is taken with a grain of salt, because of the underlying subject matter.
for these photos-
The photo from Fragile dwellings, I liked the angle, and the backround feel of the city at large, as well knowing where the space lies in proximity to the bridge. The black and white photo style, again lends itself to shadow and rawness in all three photos.
For The Tunnels, I admire the light effects. All this photo is missing is the stench of the tunnels. That sweet-sour smell of decay and garbage, with metallic and wet mixed in for good measure.
Transitory Gardens, is great portraiture. Margaret Morton studies her subject in his own standing, which is important, and captures the pride.
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:43 PM 0 comments
week 3 assignment
3 photos, and critical critique
selected from the books by Margaret Morton:
from left:
transitory gardens 1993
the tunnel 1995
fragile dwellings 2000
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:15 PM 0 comments
Fragile Dwelling
Photographs and text
by Margaret Morton
Introduction by Alan Trachtenberg
[Aperture, fall 2000]
128 pages, 90 photographs
A portion of the proceeds from the book, Fragile Dwelling, will benefit Coalition for the Homeless, New York.
You may drive by here and see that they are shabby, but I think that if you look again you see this person took the time to build a place that could be comfortable for himself. If you saw it up close, you could see that we’d turned it into a home. . . . The person who will take the time to build for himself is the person who still has an interest in himself.
— Douglas, resident of the East River encampment
Over a ten-year period, Margaret Morton documented the inventive ways in which homeless people in New York City have created not only places to live but communities offering a sense of pride, place, and individuality. Fragile Dwelling depicts a world immediately recognizable to anyone who has lived in, or even visited, a major American city. Yet these photographs tell a story far more profound than most of us, streaming past on our way from home to office, would ever imagine. Together with compelling oral histories recorded by the photographer, they demand that we confront not only the bleak consequences of economic inequality in America, but also the diverse and wonderful humanity of those who, in the midst of a booming housing market for developers, strive to create shelters for themselves from the most meager resources.
To Morton, these assemblages of crates, scrap wood, broken furniture, and other debris of the modern city are not an eyesore to be quickly glimpsed and then forgotten. They are in fact, as she shows us, homes—laboriously and ingeniously built, little by little, piece by piece. Most of these structures exist no longer—whether vacated as a result of changing economic conditions, destroyed by arson, or razed by police bulldozers.
In these photographs we visit Mr. Lee, a Chinese immigrant whose house,
a perpetual work-in-progress, was constructed without the aid of boards or nails, instead held together by an elaborate system of knots. We meet the residents of Bushville in lower Manhattan, whose improvised casitas, with their porches and flags and decorations, recall the Puerto Rican villages where many of them were born. We meet a community perched along the seawall between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, where residents look out over a peaceful, luminous East River.
The river offered me the first stability I’ve had since 1988. From here you can see the mistakes you made, you can see the things that led you to be here.
— Mizan, resident of the East River encampment
Within these miraculous constructions we find people sustained in exceedingly difficult times by an abiding faith: faith in their ability to make something of value from their lives and their surroundings; faith in the power of community; religious faith sometimes.
When you want something, no matter if it weighs two hundred pounds or three hundred, you can carry, because God helps you. With God you can carry everything.
— Hector, resident of Bushville
Alan Trachtenberg, Neil Grey Professor of English and American Studies at Yale University, is the author of numerous books on photography including Reading American Photographs: Image as History, From Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (Hill &Wang). He writes and lectures often on American literature, photography, and cultural history.
Reviews for exhibitions of Fragile Dwelling
Other books: The Tunnel, Transitory Gardens
Fragile Dwelling has been partially supported by The Buhl Foundation, Coalition for the Homeless, and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Margaret Morton's ongoing project has been partially supported by grants from the Graham Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:11 PM 0 comments
The Tunnel
Margaret Morton
[Yale University Press, fall 1995]
160 pages, 60 photographs
One of the oldest surviving homeless communities in New York City stretches for two and a half miles underground on the Upper West Side. Hidden from public view in an abandoned freight tunnel, this habitation existed for sixteen years before it was discovered by Amtrak crews renewing track for passenger service between Pennsylvania Station and Albany. Most of the residents of the fifty-block-long community refused to leave, and the population has continued to increase as the more visible homeless encampments are demolished by the city.
The earliest tunnel residents live alongside the tracks in cinderblock structures originally built as storage facilities. More recent tunnel dwellers have built plywood shanties or perched themselves on narrow ledges. Shafts of light angle through air vents. Dwellings are clustered around these points of entry and on the light-washed walls are images and writing left by graffiti artists.
An underground water source was shut off in the early 1980's. Tunnel residents are now forced to walk miles below and above ground to obtain water and food. Meals are cooked over fires that also serve to combat the damp chill. Residents recycle the discarded furniture and cookware of nearby apartment dwellers to create their own homes.
Among the tunnel residents was John, who wandered in, searching for a safe place to sleep after being attacked on a park bench.
So I kept walking to the back and found this house and started to clean it and fix it up. They were there for the workers.... I had to walk around the street at night to look for things that I wanted to put into it. And sometimes I had to carry it ten to fifteen blocks just to get it down.
John stayed for over twenty years, taking into his care fifteen abandoned cats and three stray dogs.
Bernard entered the tunnel in 1985. He supports himself by collecting cans in the early morning hours for redemption at a recycling center. Known as "The Lord of the Tunnel," Bernard became the spokesperson for the tunnel residents when they were threatened with eviction in 1991.
I have no regrets.... This existence has done so much for me. It's taken me from the vanity.... People think it's about laying back and being shiftless out here and it's not. A day-to-day existence can be most intense.
— Bernard
Cathy came to the tunnel in 1986 to join Joe, a Vietnam veteran she had met in Riverside Park. Disabled with asthma and epilepsy, Cathy had left her job in a law firm after her husband had died and her child had been killed. Although Joe had moved into one of the concrete rooms of the tunnel in 1973, it was not until Cathy arrived that he painted, added a door, and salvaged furniture. Cathy found pillows and blankets along the streets.
All the people "upstairs" have to do is get up out of their warm bed and walk into the kitchen and make what they need. We got to get up and go in front of a fire; make sure you have your paper and your this and your that or you don't eat. There's no delivery trucks coming down here with wood and supplies. The garbage cans is where we find our stuff.
— Cathy
Cathy adopted eighteen stray cats and a dog named "Buddy."
I'm not going to bring a child into this. It's hard for me and Joe to manage now. We're gonna take care of a baby? What if I have a baby? They're gonna put me in a shelter. I'm not going to live in one of those places. That's why we're down here. I got my little family, and that's enough. If you're feeling bad, they make you feel better. They're not like people, they're not two-faced. So that why I love my animals.
— Cathy
Reviews for The Tunnel
Other books: Fragile Dwelling, Transitory Gardens
Publication of The Tunnel was partially supported by the New York Foundation on the Arts. Margaret Morton's ongoing project has been partially supported by grants from the Graham Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Posted by natania nunubiznez at 12:08 PM 0 comments
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