Customer Reviews

The Tunnel: The Underground Homeless of New York City (Architecture of Despair)

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I stumbled across this book in my local library and could not put it down. It is said that we are all connected, that we are each others' mirrors. While looking at the photos in this book I realized that I was looking at a side of myself I had never lived. And yet it was a side I was familiar with...

Part of me was drawn to it, intoxicated by it, a deep, dark fantasy brought to light. Here are people living out the darkest fears of mankind, boldly and with conviction.

It is truly a remarkable book as no judgments are made; the photos speak volumes and any and all judgments are left up to the reader.

This is not your average picture book. Morton's photography is great, but the real impact of the book is its subject matter. The entire body of the text is transcribed from audio-taped interviews with homeless persons living in the Amtrak Tunnel. This place and those inhabitants are the subject of a research paper I am writing and I found the book very helpful, as well as a powerful work.

In this book the author goes underground in a train tunnel in New York City where a bunch of homelesss people are living. She interviews and photographs them in an unobstrusive way that is very respectful of them and their situations. It's a pretty disgusting place with rats (dead & alive), garbage, excrement, and no fresh air. It is really amazing how people have built comfortable housing down there with electricity even! They get hot water dripping from the pipes to shower & wash clothes. I liked this book and thought about it for a few days afterwards. The book has a lot of photo's and you'll read it pretty quickly.