Living at the LUX:Homelessness and Improvisational Waiting under COVID-19

Abstract

This photo-essay engages with the central theme of waiting under COVID-19 among a group of homeless women at the LUX hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. The images and text capture the structural shelter-in-place conditions and how the women worked within those regulations to construct a new relationship to time and the self. The images in this essay reflect what we call improvisational waiting, a concept that emphasizes the creative ways women at the LUX turned experiences of waiting into novel rhythms of life that held the promise of a better future.

Publication Title

Visual Anthropology Review

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