Eric Michael Johnson

Photographer
 
Bellevue Homeless Shelter
Location: Shanghai
Nationality: American
Biography:     Eric Michael Johnson is from the San Francisco Bay Area and currently works in Shanghai where he divides his time between commercial photography and long-term personal projects. He has received honors in still photography from... MORE
Public Story
Bellevue Homeless Shelter
Copyright Eric Michael Johnson 2024
Updated Jan 2013
Topics Documentary, Homelessness, New York City, Photography, photojournalism

The 30th Street Men´s Shelter, otherwise known as Bellevue, is New York City's largest homeless shelter. Built in 1931, the shelter is located on the East Side of Manhattan in the former Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital. Its a nine-story red-brick building enclosed by a tall spiked wrought-iron fence with dead vines growing up the walls. The shelter has many surviving traces from when it was a psychiatric hospital, complete with institutional yellow and gray paint and square windows set in most of the doors.

In early 2010, after being denied official access, I checked myself into Bellevue to document life on the inside. 

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