Fragile Dwelling

By Margaret Morton,

Book cover of Fragile Dwelling: How the Homeless Create Places of Their Own

Book description

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 also communities that offer a sense of pride, place and individuality. Morton's camera reveals the ingenuity of builders who have constructed homes out of…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Fragile Dwelling as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

For me, this book is a touchstone for what work on cities and photography can be.

Photographer Margaret Morton does what I always wanted to see in a photo book about places, cities, and houses. She combines beautiful photographs, sensitive to intimacy and respect for the people and homes she photographs, with real oral histories. It puts the words and stories of people who live in temporary dwellings—you could call them homeless—on an equal footing with Morton’s photographs of their self-built homes.

You can tell that both the interviews and the photographs emerged from real relationships and real mutual respect.

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Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

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