Synopses & Reviews
Following the homeless Manhattanites who, in the mid-1990s, chose to start a new life in the tunnel systems of the city, this record tells the stories of a variety of tunnel dwellers from the perspective of an award-winning, European photojournalist who lived and worked with them for 5 months. Photographs and personal accounts detail the struggles and pleasuresincluding the governments eviction of the tunnel people and Amtraks offering them alternative housingof Vietnam veterans, macrobiotic hippies, crack addicts, Cuban refugees, convicted killers, computer programmers, philosophical recluses, and criminal runaways. Humorous and compassionate, it also describes what has happened to these individuals 13 years since theyve left.
Review
"Voeten has found yet another frontier in the great American experimentthe one underground, in the tunnels of Manhattanand deliver[s] it to us in an utterly charming and fascinating account,' says Sebastian Junger." Publishers Weekly
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"Voetens book captivates readers with its compassionate portraits of the people and their surroundings, while exploring the surprisingly varied reasons why these men and women wound up living just beneath the surface of the readers world." Booklist
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"Tunnel People is a social documentary project, in the tradition of Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Live and Dorothea Lange's American Exodus. It exposes us to people in straitened circumstances and advocates for their relief." Wall Street Journal
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Voeten is no doubt one of the most adventurous reporters in the Netherlands.” Vrij Nederland Magazine
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"Teun Voeten has found a way to show us the tunnel people not by their statistical trademarksdrug addiction, alcoholism, crime, and AIDSbut rather through their humanity, their talents, their extraordinary attitudes of good humor and hope." [tk] reviews
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"Voeten resists the temptation to sensationalize and romanticize the underground tunnel people. Nor is his book sentimental . . . [it is a] sober and well-written report about the mean misery underground: That makes this book so powerful." Volkskrant
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"Tunnel People is a supreme example of participatory observation. The insider's point of view comes here to full light in a brilliant way. It is not an objective case-study, but a subjective, journalistic reportage, right to the point of an incredible, dynamic, human underworld that is nowhere being sensationalized nor romanticized by Voeten." Passage
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"Dutch photographer and journalist Voeten documents two years of work with the men and women who lived underground in a New York City train tunnel. . . . A vivid and accessible account." CHOICE
Synopsis
At the end of the millennium, thousands of homeless people roamed the streets of Manhattan. A small group of them went underground. Invisible to society, they managed to start a new life in the tunnel systems of the city.
Acclaimed war photographer and cultural anthropologist Teun Voeten gained unprecedented access to this netherworld. For five months in 1994 and 1995 he lived, slept and worked in the tunnel. With him, we meet Vietnam veterans, macrobiotic hippies, crack addicts, Cuban refugees, convicted killers, computer programmers, philosophical recluses and criminal runaways. Voeten describes their daily work, problems and pleasures with humor and compassion. He also witnessed the end of tunnel life. The tunnel people were evicted in 1996, but Amtrak and homeless organizations offered them alternative housing.
Some succeeded in starting again above ground, while others failed. In this updated version of the book, Voeten tracks down the original tunnel dwellers and describes what has happened in the thirteen years since they left the tunnels.
About the Author
Teun Voeten is an award-winning photojournalist whose work has been published in National Geographic, Newsweek, the New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. He is the author of How De Body? One Mans Terrifying Journey Through an African War and A Ticket To and a contributing photographer for many organizations, including Doctors without Borders, Human Rights Watch, the International Red Cross, and the United Nations.