PhotoDude.com

Thu. Sep 11, 2003

A Day of Remembrance

Just like two years ago, I was up until nearly 3am on the morning of September 11, doing web work. But today, I set the alarm and set aside the morning to reflect and remember.

I watched the reading of the names of victims at the site of the World Trade Center. Each time a child would reach the end of their list and close by saying the name of their parent, grandparent, uncle, or whichever loved one they lost on 9/11, my heart would try to escape through my throat. Hundreds of times, it brought home the deeply human loss of that day, in very individual terms. And hundreds of times this morning, that fragile emotional state many of us suffered two years ago returned, in empathy with a child’s loss.

As I’d mentioned, I’d saved a Christmas present just so I would have it for this day. It’s the book Here is New York: A Democracy of Photographs (also available via Amazon). It is perhaps the most stunning collection of photographs I’ve ever seen in book form. Nearly a thousand of them, and collectively they tell the tale of New York two years ago in a manner that also captures the essence of American Democracy.

From the book’s introduction: “In those turbulent days it seemed as if everyone in New York had a camera, and we decided that the exhibition should be as broad and inclusive as possible, open to ‘anybody and everybody’ � not just photojournalists and other professional photographers but bankers, rescue workers, artists, children, and amateurs of every stripe.”

“The guiding principle of here is new york is a simple one. If one photograph tells a story, thousands of photographs tell not only thousands of stories but also perhaps begin to tell the story if they are allowed to speak for themselves, to each other, and to the viewer directly, unframed either by glass, metal or wood, or by preconception or editorial comment. In the political sphere it is this principle, after all, which America�s Founding Fathers advanced when they developed the notion of democracy � that wisdom lies not in the vision and will of any one individual, or small group of individuals, but in the collective vision of us all.”

And, perhaps not surprisingly, that “collective vision” is considerably harsher than the one preserved by major media. You see it in the bloody and debris covered faces captured on the streets, and the graffiti left behind in the dust of the collapse. It’s there in the full page closeup image of the gaping hole in the North Tower, right in the center of the frame: a single small human form amidst the disaster, a red headed woman at the edge of the hole, leaning out in search of an escape she would never find.

You feel it when you turn the page, and it takes you several seconds to realize what you’re looking at: a severed woman’s leg, flayed almost beyond recognition except for the shoe and toes. It brings home the grisly method of murder thousands suffered that day, harshly, in a way the major media never has. It’s a horrid detail, shocking in its stark presentation.

But it is what happened that day. And we should never forget.