For several decades beginning in the late 1980s, Morton's body of work largely depicted communities of homeless people in New York City.
Her work was noted for depicting human stories within communities that were both highly structured and quite temporary, often shortly before their forcible destruction by New York Cities authorities.
[3] An exhibit of Morton's work depicting homeless people in New York City was held at the Wave Hill garden, and led to the book 1993 Transitory Gardens, Uprooted Lives featuring photographs by Morton and text written by Diana Balmori.
[4] In 2000, Morton published the book Fragile Dwelling, in which she returned to her prior interest in the actual physical structures that homeless people built in New York City.
[5] The book included an introduction from Alan Trachtenberg and extensive commentary by the people who built the structures and lived in them, and was described as "haunting" in Publishers Weekly.
[6] In 2006, while traveling through Kyrgyzstan, Morton mistook a graveyard in the distance for a city, and learned that some Kyrgyz ancestral cemeteries feature elaborate buildings for the dead.
[8] Morton's work from throughout her career of more than four decades was featured in dozens of exhibits, as well as in outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.