Tunnel People

Начало книги

In 1992, I was in New York to write an article about Malcolm X and racism in contemporary America. One of the people I spoke to was Terry Williams, at that time a very controversial ethnographer specializing in urban issues.

Williams told me about his latest project. After publishing provocative studies on crack houses and cocaine gangs in which he stated that crack dealers were just entrepreneurs who followed the American Dream, Williams was now focusing on the underground homeless. For the past few years, he had been studying people living in New York’s tunnel system. “A new class of people who have been rejected by society and became in fact invisible,” Williams formulated solemnly. “I want to give the invisible a human face.”

Immediately, I was intrigued by the phenomenon of tunnel people. Williams was actually looking for a photographer so pretty soon we decide to cooperate. However, I found the tunnel people such an extremely fascinating subject that what initially was meant to be just an article to accompany my photos eventually turned into a book.

Читать дальше →