150 pages
English language
Published 2000 by Random House.
4 stars
(1 review)
"In Flophouse, documentarians David Isay and Stacy Abramson and photographer Harvey Wang chronicle this vanishing world through the voices and portraits of a number of those residents, interspersed with photographs of their surroundings. The men come from all manner of backgrounds, and the rich variety of the tales they tell is a testament to the number of ways the bottom can fall out of life in America, even in prosperous times.
This book warrants comparison with Walker Evans and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, but the authors were inspired most directly by Joseph Mitchell, who wrote about some of these same flophouses with an honest warmth and an acceptance of life as it's found. Shimmering with humanity and utterly devoid of false sentiment, Flophouse is a powerful reminder that even on the margins, life defies all attempts at reduction."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects
- Poor men -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews.
- Poor men -- New York (State) -- New York -- Portraits.
- Lodging-houses -- New York (State) -- New York -- Anecdotes.
- Lodging-houses -- New York (State) -- New York -- Pictorial works.
- Skid row -- New York (State) -- New York.
- Marginality, Social -- New York (State) -- New York.
- City and town life -- New York (State) -- New York.
- Documentary photography -- New York (State) -- New York.
- Bowery (New York, N.Y. : Street)