Margaret Morton (
Née
A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...
Willis; October 16, 1948 – June 27, 2020) was an American photographer, author, and professor of visual arts. She was a School of Art Professor at
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...
. For several decades beginning in the late 1980s, Morton's body of work largely depicted communities of homeless people in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. She published a number of photo collections in books, usually supplemented by detailed interviews with the photos' subjects. Her work was noted for depicting human stories within communities that were both highly structured and quite temporary, often shortly before their forcible destruction by New York Cities authorities.
Her success in documenting poverty in New York City has been compared to the work of
Jacob Riis
Jacob August Riis ( ; May 3, 1849 – May 26, 1914) was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer. He contributed significantly to the cause of urban reform in America at the turn of the twen ...
.
[
]
Early life and education
Morton was born on October 16, 1948, in Akron, Ohio
Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County, Ohio, Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 C ...
. She attended Kent State University
Kent State University (KSU) is a public research university in Kent, Ohio. The university also includes seven regional campuses in Northeast Ohio and additional facilities in the region and internationally. Regional campuses are located in As ...
, graduating in 1970.[ In 1971, Morton married Thomas Judson Morton, and the two later divorced.][ She then became a graduate student at The ]Yale University School of Art
The Yale School of Art is the art school of Yale University. Founded in 1869 as the first professional fine arts school in the United States, it grants Masters of Fine Arts degrees to students completing a two-year course in graphic design, painti ...
, and obtained an MFA in 1977.[
]
Career
In 1980 Morton moved to New York City and became an instructor at Cooper Union.[ She was promoted to tenured professor in the School of Art there in 1985.][ Throughout 1989, Morton walked past a large semi-permanent community of homeless people in ]Tompkins Square Park
Tompkins Square Park is a public park in the Alphabet City, Manhattan, Alphabet City portion of East Village, Manhattan, East Village, Manhattan, New York City. The square-shaped park, bounded on the north by 10th Street (Manhattan), East 10th ...
during her regular commute, and she became interested in the topic of homelessness
Homelessness or houselessness – also known as a state of being unhoused or unsheltered – is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and adequate housing. People can be categorized as homeless if they are:
* living on the streets, also kn ...
in New York City. This community was the subject of many of her photographs during 1989, until it was destroyed by the New York Police Department
The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest in ...
within a year.[ Morton was initially interested primarily in the structures that made up the physical community, but she became increasingly interested in the people there, and when the community was broken up she remained in contact with many of the people who had lived there.][ Some of those people continued to be featured in her photographs as they dispersed throughout the city, forming the basis for Morton's decades-long interest in photographing and interviewing the homeless people of New York City.][
An exhibit of Morton's work depicting homeless people in New York City was held at the ]Wave Hill
Wave Hill is a estate in the Hudson Hill section of Riverdale in the Bronx, New York City. Wave Hill currently consists of public horticultural gardens and a cultural center, all situated on the slopes overlooking the Hudson River, with exp ...
garden, and led to the book 1993 ''Transitory Gardens, Uprooted Lives'' featuring photographs by Morton and text written by Diana Balmori
Diana Balmori Ling (June 4, 1932 – November 14, 2016) was a landscape and urban designer. She was the founder of the landscape design firm Balmori Associates.
Early life and education
Born in Gijón, Spain, Diana Balmori spent most of her ...
.[ In 1995, Morton published her second book, called ''The Tunnel: The Underground Homeless of New York City''. ''The Tunnel'' is a collection of photographs and stories featuring the homeless inhabitants of an abandoned train tunnel beyond the end of the ]West Side Line
The West Side Line, also called the West Side Freight Line, is a railroad line on the west side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. North of Penn Station, from 34th Street, the line is used by Amtrak passenger service heading north via ...
. Morton demonstrates that the community was highly structured, with strong norms of privacy, established purposes for different parts of the space, sources of income and exchange, and relationships among members of the community living in the tunnel.[ She also reveals how the residents used the space through interviews that supplement the photographs.][ The photographs were taken and the interviews conducted between 1991 and 1995, and shortly afterwards the community was evicted from the tunnel when ]Amtrak
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...
decided to resume using it.[
In 2000, Morton published the book ''Fragile Dwelling'', in which she returned to her prior interest in the actual physical structures that homeless people built in New York City.] The book included an introduction from Alan Trachtenberg
Alan Zelick Trachtenberg (March 22, 1932 – August 18, 2020) was an American historian and the Neil Gray Jr. Professor of English and professor emeritus of American Studies at Yale University.
Born in Philadelphia, Trachtenberg attended Temple Un ...
and extensive commentary by the people who built the structures and lived in them, and was described as "haunting" in ''Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...
''.[
In 2004 Morton published ''Glass House'', which documented a community of teenaged squatters living in an abandoned glass factory on the ]Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets.
Traditionally an im ...
of Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
.[ Morton saw the book as documenting the type of highly unusual community that was completely erased from the East Village by the process of ]gentrification
Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more Wealth, affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and urban planning, planning. Gentrification ...
very soon after the book's publication.[
Starting in 2012, Morton began photographing the Farley Building, which was constructed in 1914 by ]McKim, Mead & White
McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm that came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in fin de siècle New York. The firm's founding partners Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), Wil ...
and was renovated starting in 2010 to make way for the Moynihan Train Hall
Moynihan Train Hall is an expansion of Pennsylvania Station, the main intercity and commuter rail station in New York City, into the city's former main post office building, the James A. Farley Building. Located between Eighth Avenue, Nin ...
. The resulting collection of photographs was exhibited at The Architectural League of New York
The Architectural League of New York is a non-profit organization "for creative and intellectual work in architecture, urbanism, and related disciplines".
The league dates from 1881, when Cass Gilbert organized meetings at the Salmagundi Club for ...
.[
In 2006, while traveling through ]Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan,, pronounced or the Kyrgyz Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the south, and the People's Republic of China to the east. ...
, Morton mistook a graveyard in the distance for a city, and learned that some Kyrgyz ancestral cemeteries feature elaborate buildings for the dead. She later returned to Kyrgyzstan to photograph a variety of cemeteries, focusing on the analogy between cemeteries and cities, as well as the substantial temporal and spatial variation in the appearance of Kygryz cemeteries.[ These photographs were published in the 2014 book ''Cities of the Dead: The Ancestral Cemeteries of Kyrgyzstan''.][ The photographs from ''Cities of the Dead'' were featured in an exhibit at the Arthur A. Houghton Jr. Gallery at Cooper Union.][
Morton's work from throughout her career of more than four decades was featured in dozens of exhibits, as well as in outlets including '']The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', and ''The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
''. Morton died on June 27, 2020, at her home in New York City, as a result of leukemia
Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or ' ...
.[
]
Selected works
*''Transitory Gardens, Uprooted Lives'' (1993)
*''The Tunnel: The Underground Homeless of New York City'' (1995)
*''Fragile Dwelling'' (2000)
*''Glass House'' (2004)
*''Cities of the Dead: The Ancestral Cemeteries of Kyrgyzstan'' (2014)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morton, Margaret
1948 births
2020 deaths
20th-century American women writers
20th-century American writers
21st-century American women writers
21st-century American writers
Social documentary photographers
20th-century American women photographers
21st-century American women photographers
20th-century American photographers
21st-century American photographers
Cooper Union faculty
Yale School of Art alumni
Kent State University alumni
Women photojournalists