Housing Policies, Human Services, New York City - History, U.S. Travel Photography - Mid-Atlantic, Regional Studies - Northeast & Middle Atlantic U.S., Documentary Photography & Photojournalism, Homelessness

Fragile dwelling

Name: Fragile dwelling
Author: Alan Trachtenberg
ISBN: 9780893819156

by Alan Trachtenberg

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Overview

Over a ten-year period, Margaret Morton documented the inventive ways in which homeless people in New York City created not only places to live but also communities that offer a sense of pride, place, and individuality.

Morton's camera reveals the ingenuity of the builders who constructed homes out of discarded materials, such as warehouse pallets, junked auto parts, and demolition scrap. Her luminous photographs illustrate the intrinsic social significance of housing, while bringing to light the determination and aesthetic sensibilities of people not commonly thought to possess either. Accompanied by compelling oral histories, the photographs in Fragile Dwelling raise serious questions yet unanswered about social policies that leave no room for self-made alternatives to traditional housing.

Margaret Morton, whose previous books include The Tunnel and Transitory Gardens, is Professor of Art at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City.

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Editorials

Washington Review

Fragile Dwelling is a collection of images, texts and quotations that document these homeless communities. The book visually, more than through written analysis, exposes the displacements to which we have become immune. It also follows the need people have to carve out spaces so that they can create a place to exist.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Using discarded scraps of wood, metal, plastic and any other available materials, formerly homeless New York men and women built improvised housing in the early '90s with care and a need for order, privacy and community. Morton (The Tunnel), a professor of art at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, befriended some of them and documented their structures. The result is this haunting collection of 90 stark, sharply reproduced b&w photos, with captions by Morton, an introduction by housing critic and scholar Alan Trachtenberg, and commentary from the builders themselves. "If I don't do something here, my mind will die," says Hector A. of his Bushville cabin in the East Village. The homes at Bushville, "The Hill" and other areas, often under bridges or on abandoned piers, are shown with the wreaths and religious icons that often mark their entryways, and the pots, cookstoves, couches, beds and furniture drawn from a city full of discards. Since New York systematically bulldozed all of the camps shown (the last was demolished in 1996), Morton's book is an important testament to the will and ingenuity of their inhabitants. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.