Mac’s Second House, East River, 1993. Courtesy of Margaret Morton Archive
Jimmy’s Pond, Norfolk and Broome Streets, 1991. Courtesy of Margaret Morton Archive
Bernard Cooking, The Tunnel, 1994. Courtesy of Margaret Morton Archive
Vantage Points
Inside the Margaret Morton Archive
Bonnie Yochelson & Sean Corcoran
A painter in her early career, Margaret Morton (1948-2020) was a professor of art at Cooper Union in New York City for thirty years, but is now best known for photographing and chronicling New York City’s unhoused communities for nearly two decades — a project she began when she was in her 40s and which yielded four books.
Her main projects included photographing the lives of people living in an abandoned train tunnel; the structures built by people living in Tompkins Square Park, across the street from her apartment; and people living underneath the Manhattan Bridge.
She also documented the squatter movement on New York’s Lower East Side (Loisaida) in the 1990s with one focus on life in Glass House, an abandoned glass factory at the corner of Avenue D and East 10th Street.
She also completed a project on ancient Islamic cemeteries in Kyrgyzstan and another on the interior of the immense, emptied Farley Post Office in midtown Manhattan. Underlying these disparate subjects is Morton’s fascination with unfamiliar forms of architecture.
Bonnie Yochelson is an independent curator and art historian specializing in New York photography. She and Morton met in 1989 when Yochelson was Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York and became friends. In 2002, Morton asked her to be the executor of her estate in order to properly preserve her work. Yochelson, now also the executive director of the Margaret Morton Archive, will present a biographical sketch and critical assessment of Morton’s life and work.
Sean Corcoran, Senior Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, leads the conversation and the Q&A after the presentation.
A former Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, Bonnie Yochelson has written books on many New York photographers, including Berenice Abbott, Jacob Riis, Alfred Stieglitz, and most recently, Alice Austen. She taught for 30 years in the Department of Photography, Video and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts and is currently Executive Director of the Margaret Morton Archive.
Sean Corcoran is the Senior Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York. He previously served as Assistant Curator of Photography at George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY. His exhibitions have included Through a Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs, Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection and currently Robert Rauschenberg’s New York: Pictures from the Real World. He has written extensively on photography and graffiti, contributing to more than two dozen publications, including essays for City as Canvas, Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection, Elliott Erwitt: At Home and Around the World, and I See a City: Todd Webb’s New York. He also edited the catalogue for the current Robert Rauschenberg exhibition.
