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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Chuck and Lisa lived in their makeshift home in the Amtrak Tunnel for more then nine years.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
There is a vibrant world behind and beneath our surfaces. Jamaica and Zoe take refuge by the tracks. They slept in subway tunnels for more then two years before getting married and leaving the streets.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Initially Chuck lived in an area further down the tunnel near an encampment started by Brooklyn, and her friend's Hollywood and BK.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
We are accustomed to seeing unsheltered men and women, they can become invisible to us. After being evicted from track 13, Penn Station New York in 2004, Willy made a home in a box near the train terminal. Every morning he dismantles his home. Every night he builds a new home. He can hear trains pass below the concrete underneath him. After years living unsheltered, Willy is only comfortable sleeping in a box.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Chuck shares this small home, with his domestic partner Lisa. Candles, bottled water, and a bucket are necessary. Books are shared by tunnel residents.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
One of Lisa's jobs is collecting pretty things to sell. Looking through the garbace behind a project, she is at risk for assault or arrest.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Constrction sites and utility crews allowed the homeless to take away scrap until 2009 when the unused materials were judged too lucrative to give away.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Lisa and Chuck use some of their earnings to buy food.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Light falls from the grates in the ceiling of the train tunnel. Chuck waits for his companion.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Known for it's grafitti, the tunnel attracts occasional visitors. Chuck and Lisa watch as someone enters. They have been robbed and attacked in the past. Another risk is an eviction or police raid if the tunnel has too much traffic.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Lisa, several months pregnant, collects some things for the baby she will have.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Closer to delivery Lisa is still staying in the tunnel. Only recently incarcerated Lisa was released to the streets after her initial request for admittance to a live-in rehabilitation program was ignored.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
One of Lisa's eleven children.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
August 06, 2010_ A massive police raid on the tunnel destroys the makeshift settlement. The residents are evicted into the streets with the possessions they can carry. No housing assistance or resettlement is offerred.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Further in to the tunnel, Brooklyn was not bothered during the raid in 2010. She also was allowed to stay during the massive eviction during the 90's.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
One of Brooklyn's jobs is collecting bottles and cans.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Brooklyn has lived in the tunnel for more then twenty years. She found her home by following a pack of feral cats.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Sade was one of the tunnel's feral cats. In the beginning Sade shared her home with as many as thirty others including Barney, Scary Harry, One Eye, and Brooklyn Cat before she died in 2013. ASPCA members donated food and veternary care.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
For years Country had home in a derelict building along the Hudson River
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Country runs the dead-end street called the Batcave. All hours of the day and night men and women gather, seeking it's shadows.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Snow White helps Krissy who is sick to dress. A drug dealer hit her during an altercation. Snow White decides to leave the streets.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
After their eviction Chuck and Lisa hid for almost a year, foregoing candles, lanterns, and without their old makeshift roof to keep out the cold. In 2011 Chuck and Lisa are accepted into city shelter housing for married couples and domestic partners.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Chuck has trouble adjusting, and spends much of his time in bed. After a difficult two years, Lisa ends their domestic partnership. Chuck is devistated.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Lisa turns her life around, stops using drugs and cuts down on her drinking. She and a new husband share a committment to achieving a better life. Lisa lost her housing when her husband of one month was arrested. She was not able to pay rent and had to go back to the beginning to re-qualify for assistance. She stays with Country at The Batcave for the year it takes her to requalify.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
The beauty of place of people is real…and it is a brutal life. Most if not all of the women and some of the men have been raped. Most if not all of them, beaten. They are at high risk of malnutrition, of overdose, of food and drug poisoning. Psychosocial disabilities are common. All of them have PTSD. Other then in jail, mentally ill people on the street are receiving their primary care from the mentally ill people on the street. Geo takes a "homeless shower" in the Batcave.
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© 2021 Andrea Star Reese
Men and women survive on the street for years because they accept on another, care for one another, because they become a family, a community.
Public Story
The Urban Cave
Credits:
andrea star reese
Updated: 06/16/16
In October 2007 while shooting in the train tunnel I noticed smoke rising from a burning cigarette on the ground next to me. Clearly a signal. I spoke to the top of a portion of a wall against which a ladder was placed. No one answered. Carts and broken suitcases were stacked nearby. Above, amidst piles of garbage bags, I could see a bucket, shoes, a bottle of water, and various articles of clothing. Later I went back to the wall to inform the house that I would be returning the next day. Chuck and Lisa stood up. Lisa was pregnant.
Mole People is a derogatory and misleading name. Those who find a refuge underground are not moles, just people seeking a safe place to live.
This series of 35mm digital prints comes from years spent on the street following men and women part of an illusive culture not always considered with sympathy, who accepted my company. I never knew what would happen or who I would find. Sometimes they just told me to follow them. It was important to me to preserve the beauty of place and people. I never censored, but neither did they. The people of the Tunnel/River/Batcave community took huge personal risks for this work and gave it everything they had, their story, their time, their protection, their love. All they asked was that I accept and tell the truth, all of it, even when it wasn’t easy for them or me, in the hopes that young people who might see their story will know that this is not the way to live.
What does it take for these men and women to live in rough and challenging conditions for as long as twenty, thirty years? Kindness, courage, acceptance, and shared hardship. They took care of one another, shared resources, saved lives, stood together against predators and extended comfort to the damaged, to the deeply saddened.
The beauty of place of people is real…and it is a brutal life. Most if not all of the women and some of the men have been raped. Most if not all of them, beaten. They are at high risk of malnutrition, of overdose, of food and drug poisoning. Psychosocial disabilities are common. All of them have PTSD. Other then in jail, mentally ill people on the street are receiving their primary care from the mentally ill people on the street. Necessary medications, dosages often not adjusted, are at high risk of theft and loss. Addictions complicate and further disable. City shelters are considered to be bug infested dehumanizing jail like places where theft, assaults and rape do occur
Since 1986, informal settlements have existed in the area where I photographed, despite the no tolerance methods used to economically cleanse the area of it’s homeless. For years the Tunnel, the Whitehouse and The Batcave were safe havens. Now that time is over.
Fragile and resilient, tragic and beautiful, self-destructive yet surviving, these homeless men and women are just people. Neither more than us, nor less than us they are a part of us. And they are apart from us. Nothing is simple in the shadows of the street