Margaret Morton Interview · Mar 24, 07:47 AM

Margaret Morton
Interview at Cooper Union on Thursday, January 6, 2005

Margaret first began photographing New York City’s homeless in 1989. “I’m a walker in this city,” and when she was walking around 5 a.m. in mid-December of 1989 she saw the police destroying the structures that had been built in Tompkin’s Square Park. She recognized the 75 structures in the park as the “architecture of despair,” and they piqued her interest. With everything that she was reading in the newspapers about a possible closing of Tompkin’s she knew that the structures would be destroyed and she was telling people that someone should shoot photos before this piece of history is gone.
Margaret hadn’t planned it but on that early morning walk she would be the one to shoot the site. There was a fleet of garbage trucks. Cops were tearing apart the homes and throwing them piece by piece into the garbage trucks and folks were watching their places be destroyed, piece by piece. She documented the event.
From Tompkin’s, people wandered East to vacant lots. They built plywood shanties, not just tents, filling an entire lot at 8th Street between B and C, and occupied the lot bordered by 8th and 9th and C and D. When they were evicted from here in 1991 many moved to the banks of the East River. Margaret’s photos of the people and their dwellings would become her books (Fragile Dwelling) and (Transitory Gardens: Uprooted Lives).
The famed ’88 riots came about not because of homelessness in Tompkin’s Square Park but because of curfew. This was the only park in the city with no curfew. The Memorial Day Eviction of 1991 marked the closing of the park for two years. The reason for the closing was cited as renovations and some renovations were made but the reason was to displace the homeless inhabitants. Margaret said that she originally began shooting photos with an architectural interest but that interest quickly grew to include and eventually be consumed by the people who built and lived in those structures.
Relationships strengthened and Margaret was being shown many communities that were out of plain view. One of these dwellings was called “Jimmy’s Garden,” located at Norfolk and Broome. A fish pond, vegetable garden, and tent were hidden by eight foot tall weeds. Margaret was also shown a community at the East River where the Manhattan Bridge meets Canal St., and another group of dwellings simply called the “Hill.”
Many of us have so much stuff that we can’t remember where each thing came from. Clothes, furniture, gadgets, where did it all come from? Margaret has put herself in the company of those who don’t have money to buy everything they want and who don’t have people looking out for them and supplying them with what they need. Margaret said, “I live simply. Some of the people I photograph have more material possessions than me.” Margaret doesn’t drink or smoke and for a five year period she didn’t eat out at restaurants. That is simple living. She does have running water, heat, and electricity which her friends on the street don’t have. She admits that in some sense she, “takes for granted having a place to live.” She accepts it as a human right. In fact, in the 1980’s a law was passed that the city has an obligation to provide shelter to everyone.
The people she encounters are always working on their places. In Bushville, a now defunct community of shanties bordered by 3rd and 4th Streets and Avenues C and D, residents had front porches, a community garden, and they used skids to make a sidewalk connecting all the houses. People had private spaces, semi-private spaces, and community spaces. Margaret realized that the people she was photographing, “live totally in the present.” They are always building, furnishing and adding decorations to their places without a thought of the possibility that their places could be destroyed tomorrow. How sure can any of us be that everything we have worked so hard for will not get taken away tomorrow?
Beside this lesson, Margaret learned that to survive on the streets takes supreme discipline. Margaret began spending three days a week in the Freedom Tunnel. It is a two and a half mile long tunnel that runs along the Hudson River. Winter time is especially rough because it is colder in the tunnel than it is above ground. To avoid freezing to death people listen to the radio all day to keep informed about the weather conditions. It is possible to get trapped in the tunnel for days at a time when some of the most extreme weather hits. People have to store food and water, things which are not always readily accessible. There was only one gas station anywhere near the vicinity that would give out water. All the public restrooms are closed in winter and options are limited. (People sharpened their survival skills by watching and learning from Viet Nam veterans.)
The Tunnel was a dangerous place, not because of the inhabitants but because of the people who didn’t live there, and the twisted metal and enormous holes that weren’t visible in the near total darkness. Gangs of kids who entered the tunnel at the 123rd street entrance would torment the inhabitants, and even went as far as setting their huts on fire. Margaret was never scared to go into the tunnel but admits that she, “became dependent on a guide who could see in the dark.” As a courtesy to those who lived there she didn’t use a flash light because people might mistake her for a cop so she needed someone to guide her around the holes and booby traps. Her photos of this experience became the book, (The Tunnel: The Underground Homeless of New York City (Architecture of Despair).
In all her wanderings and explorations Margaret has never been arrested. She’s been stopped by the police a couple times in the Tunnel but the “I’m a professor doing research bit,” saved her both times. The biggest toll that her work takes on her is that a lot of the people she forms relationships with die. They have no one, no family, and she is, “the next of kin, the only one who can do something,” when a person dies.
The people she knows are in a community but they have no family. Margaret experienced tremendous devastation when two men died whom she had grown close to; she cared about them. Mr. Lee died on the Hill. Margaret went to the morgue but they wouldn’t release his body. Mr. Lee had been murdered. He was burned to death inside his shack. Margaret had the support of two other artists who were involved with Mr. Lee. Together they threatened the morgue that they would go to the Daily News if the body wasn’t released. This wasn’t a power move but a humanitarian move. Margaret wanted to give her friend a proper burial. She didn’t want him to go to Potter’s Field where he wouldn’t be Mr. Lee. He’d only be a number.
Margaret met Jose Camacho when she was frequenting the Tunnel in the early to mid 1990’s going 3 times a week for five and a half years. Eventually Jose got into housing. She would send him cards for holidays and send little notes. Jose had saved everything Margaret had sent him. No one had seen Jose for two weeks so when a detective went into his apartment and discovered Jose’s dead body, he also found tons of cards from Margaret. The detective was very helpful along with a few others who took an interest and they had a service at a beautiful Catholic church Uptown and laid Jose to rest at a cemetery north of Manhattan, an ornate cemetery where Ayn Rand and Al Pacino’s dad are buried. Again Margaret didn’t want her friend to be only a number. Potter’s Field is on Hard Island and it’s owned by the Department of Corrections. Prisoners bury the dead bodies. This island off of City Point is actually a beautiful windswept island of stark beauty. Margaret discovered this when by chance she was able to visit but, it is nearly impossible to get out there.
Margaret loves doing what she does but, “shooting photographs is only 2% of it, the other 98% is listening to stories and getting to know the people she’s shooting.” She doesn’t shoot and run. One look at her photos and it’s plain to see the intimacy between her and her subjects. Margaret sees the whole picture. “I’ll wait in line at social services for two hours with someone so she can get her check.” She has seen workers asleep on the job and has herself been treated sub-humanly by workers who don’t know that she isn’t there to pick up a check. She is interested to see why people drop out of the system and has found obvious answers.
Two organizations for which Margaret has a lot of respect though, are the Coalition for the Homeless and Pathways to Housing. Coalition is “really trying to make a difference. They provide housing without stipulating that recipients jump through a million hoops. It’s not like someone has to go through a two year training program and then maybe they will get housing. The organization is headed by Mary Broznehan, whom Margaret calls an empathetic visionary. Pathways to Housing is a group headed by Sam Sambros, another visionary, who gets housing for the mentally ill.
Margaret is not a nurse or a social worker but she takes a genuine interest in people and in so doing accomplishes much for a group that no one seems to know how, or wants, to help. She uses a Mumia 6 camera that produces 2.25 × 2.25 inch negatives. The camera looks like an oversized, puffed up 35mm but it’s heavier. She was using a 35mm when she first began shooting at Tompkin’s but got the Mumia 6 in 1990; the camera is no longer made. It’s medium format and has a sharp lens which allows her to capture details of people and their lives. This suits her work because, “details are in the shadows not in the light.” This camera allows her to “tell stories of lives as she was seeing them, and to see the details that made the Tunnel into a home.”
Margaret has witnessed patterns of profound human needs being denied. Her interest in architecture led her to investigate the homes people had constructed out of objects they found in the city. Later she would concentrate on housing for the poor. “It all looks very clinical,” and, aside from how the housing looks the rules that one must follow to live in public housing are inhumane. No pets are allowed. When everyone else has betrayed someone, and all they have is their dog, how could they give that up? Like most things, homelessness included, there is much more than we can catch at a glance.
Margaret has been influenced by Rick Beards essay “On Being Homeless.” He makes the point that the record of the rich is preserved, photographed, but the record of the homeless only exists as a problem. Margaret doesn’t want to make a book documenting the homeless and their “homes” that will fall apart and disintegrate like so much else, so her book is a work of art in itself, well bound, stylish.
Her experiences have been very humbling and through them she has seen and come to appreciate the resiliance of the human spirit. She recognizes and respects the dignity of the homeless in her city and through a “trade in trust” she has done interviews and shot photographs with some extremely creative, hard working, strong individuals who are often mistakenly viewed in a different light.
Margaret’s latest book is called Glass House. She documents NYC’s squatters in alphabet city, in the now defunct Glass House. It is available from Pennsylvania State University Press.

— Albin

Comment

1. This is something you could turn into an article for Interview or The New Yorker. Although you’ll have to check if she has had stories done on her before. I assume so.

   — robert trent · Mar 24, 09:50 AM · #

Commenting is closed for this article.