2008 Woodie Awards
Sept. 11 exhibit touches
Daniel Koik
Issue date: 9/11/02 Section: News
The effect is to overwhelm with images, colors, emotions and memories. To stand in the main section of the exhibition is to relive everything felt during the last year. From the middle of the room, the pictures blur into an impenetrable mass. Look around and the images of the last year again flash through the mind. The plane flying into the second tower. Candlelight vigils. Piles of mangled steel. Crowds running from advancing dust clouds. American flags. A tower collapsing. The blue sky. While no one else but the photographer saw exactly what he or she took a picture of, we have all seen similar things on television, in other photos and even in person. At times it is difficult to tell whether you are actually seeing these pictures yourself or simply imposing your own memories on them.
On closer examination the blur separates itself into thousands of distinct photographs. The photographs included only had to meet the criterion of relating to Sept. 11 and its aftermath "in the broadest yet most intimate sense." The photos submitted and displayed include pictures of the Twin Towers' construction, pictures of its life ranging from loving studies to cheesy postcard shots and pictures of its destruction from every conceivable angle, location and context. In one, a woman stands framed in her doorway, her distress clear even in silhouette. In another, a group of Hasidic Jews stands on a street corner talking amongst themselves as the towers burn. One shows a group converging on a rooftop NYU tennis court. Uniting all these images are the burning towers in the distance.
The photographs also capture the wide range of emotions that resulted from the day's events. There is fear and confusion on the faces of those fleeing the collapse. Those combing the wreckage in the immediate aftermath have an uncomprehending blank stare. An exhausted firefighter sleeps against a pile of rubble. Anguished friends and relatives hand out fliers describing the missing. Strangers hug in a city park.
On closer examination the blur separates itself into thousands of distinct photographs. The photographs included only had to meet the criterion of relating to Sept. 11 and its aftermath "in the broadest yet most intimate sense." The photos submitted and displayed include pictures of the Twin Towers' construction, pictures of its life ranging from loving studies to cheesy postcard shots and pictures of its destruction from every conceivable angle, location and context. In one, a woman stands framed in her doorway, her distress clear even in silhouette. In another, a group of Hasidic Jews stands on a street corner talking amongst themselves as the towers burn. One shows a group converging on a rooftop NYU tennis court. Uniting all these images are the burning towers in the distance.
The photographs also capture the wide range of emotions that resulted from the day's events. There is fear and confusion on the faces of those fleeing the collapse. Those combing the wreckage in the immediate aftermath have an uncomprehending blank stare. An exhausted firefighter sleeps against a pile of rubble. Anguished friends and relatives hand out fliers describing the missing. Strangers hug in a city park.