Basement Sanctuaries explores the ways in which superintendentsdecorate basements of apartment buildings in Northern Manhattan,New York City by illuminating the process of migrant adaptation tothe metropolis from an intimate perspective. Superintendents arecaretakers that usually live in the basements of apartment buildingswith ten or more units. They are in charge of the building on behalfof the owner, maintain its public areas and the building's mechanicaland technical systems, do repairs in the apartments and deal with thetenants' concerns. Most of the supers in Northern Manhattan aremigrants from Latin America or the Caribbean. During the process ofapartment hunting in Northern Manhattan, Wurfel discovered theseunexpected and innovatively decorated areas. The repeated themesof cultural, national, and religious origins suggest that similarimpulses drive the decoration process for different supers. Howeverthe photographs also show the diverse ways in which supers havepersonalised their multifunctional living/work spaces and havecreated a uniquely intimate space in the basement of New York City.Grey Matters SeriesThis is the fourth volume in the Schilt Publishing Grey Matters seriesfollowing on from Matthew Murray's SKA, Chiara Tocci's Life AfterZog, and Lucia Ganieva's Ermitazhniki.Gesche Wurfel, born in Bremerhaven,Germany, has lived in the UnitedStates since 2009. She gained a degreein Urban Planning from the Universityof Dortmund, Germany in 2003 and anMA in Photography and Urban Cultureswith Distinction from Goldsmiths,University of London, UK in 2006. Shewas selected as one of the BloombergNew Contemporaries in 2007 and hasbeen exhibited internationally. TheBasement Sanctuaries series has beenawarded three grants by the NorthernManhattan Arts Alliance and the LowerManhattan Cultural Council, and hasbeen exhibited at Field Projects NYCand the New York Public Library.Basement Santuries will be exhibited atUPI, Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY in June 2014and at Blue Sky Gallery, Portland,Oregon in September 2014.