In the article, “Tapestry of Space: Domestic Architecture and Underground Communities in Margaret Morton’s Photography of a Forgotten New York”, Nersessova examines Morton’s book, she depicts a comprehensive overview of the buildings in New York. She captures and portrays images of urban areas that affect individuals and express behavior. The article targets Morton’s various photographs that incorporate communities with disposed materials. Morton’s works were depicted by the Situationist International (SI), which was an international organization composed of artists, intellectuals, and governmental theorists. The Situationist International had a theory on the psychogeography and material production, which correlated to Morton’s photography. The works provide further exploration of the metropolitan environment, which devotes to the theory. The Situationist International group expressed the society of the spectacle, which represents the media determining the philosophy of an individual. People are influenced by the images of the diversified commodities.
The representation of the images affects the behavior and the fundamentals of a person. The Situationist International compares the society of the spectacle and the reality of homelessness. They aimed to bring the secluded and often ignored the reality of the art and life as a whole. The association of the art and life regulates that the environment impacts the psychological behavior. This distinguishes a dérive between the homeless and sheltered. In Morton’s photography, she captures the survivability of the less fortunate underground society and how the environment affects their lives. Morton interprets abandoned tunnels as lively surviving in which most are self-created homes. She takes an interview and presents the analysis of the life and conditions the individual experiences, which is persistent with the SI theory of the society of the spectacle. The interviewee, Bernard exhibits the life in the tunnel; people used the collected material to construct a living area. Bernard suggests that most people moved to the tunnels to refrain themselves from the outside controlled world and discovered themselves. He demonstrates that homelessness is not strictly due to economic issues but also the desire to a new lifestyle. The lifestyle underground changes the aspect of the reality of life. Morton also observes that after living underground, many people move aboveground to accommodate new experiences.
People have different perspectives of the city that Morton analyzes through psychological behaviors and attitudes of the individuals. The analysis of all the stories of different communities provides a worldwide perspective of the effect towards human psychology and behavior of the urban life of diverse individuals. The representation of homeless architecture depicts the lifestyle and the voices of many individuals. Homes were built with material that represented shelter, success and security for those who significantly created them. In an interview, Morton describes a man who blissfully created his home, “You may drive by here and see that they are shabby, but I think that if you look again you see this person took the time to build a place that could be comfortable for himself”(Morton 8). People appreciate their own isolated living situations, and others tend to neglect the architectural spaces. In the article, Morton pieces many exquisite and profound aspects of diversified living situations and creates an in-depth insight all around to create an archive of individuals living in an extraordinary social, political and economic condition.