2008 Woodie Awards
Sept. 11 exhibit touches
Daniel Koik
Issue date: 9/11/02 Section: News
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by Daniel Koik
I had never known that the Pentagon is visible from Village A until I watched it burn. From that perspective, the building had simply resembled every other low-rise office complex in the distance. I am fairly certain that no one else thought about it either. Certainly no one would have ever taken a picture of it. But that day dozens of students stood with me watching the smoke rise and many stood with their cameras, ready to capture the moment.
Sept. 11 was the most well documented disaster in the history of mankind. Those students who chose to photograph their experience of the Pentagon were joined by thousands of others. In New York City, the day after the attack, a single photograph was pasted to a storefront window in SoHo. Others soon joined it as people gathered around the storefront. A call for more photographs was issued and "Here is New York" was born.
The resulting exhibition, which will be on view at the Corcoran Gallery through Nov. 11, bills itself as "a democracy of photographs." It seeks to replicate and expand on the impact of that initial window display of anonymous pictures. Around 2,000 photographs are displayed, simply clipped to wires without any apparent order or reason. There are no captions or credits and the work of professionals hangs next to that of amateurs — businessmen, firefighters, tourists, children and anyone else who happened to have a camera. Anyone who wanted to could and still can submit photos to be scanned into the collection, the best of which are printed digitally and displayed without regard for who took them.
The very purpose of photographing disaster is questioned in a photo on display. In it, a sign on posterboard questions the very purpose of photographing the tragedy. "I kept wondering what makes us think we can capture the loss, the pride and the confusion — the complexity — in a 4x6 glossy," its author wrote. In its own way, "Here is New York" is an attempt to answer that question. While any one photograph may only have been able to capture one scene, event, person or emotion, the collective whole adds up to much more than the sum of its parts.
I had never known that the Pentagon is visible from Village A until I watched it burn. From that perspective, the building had simply resembled every other low-rise office complex in the distance. I am fairly certain that no one else thought about it either. Certainly no one would have ever taken a picture of it. But that day dozens of students stood with me watching the smoke rise and many stood with their cameras, ready to capture the moment.
Sept. 11 was the most well documented disaster in the history of mankind. Those students who chose to photograph their experience of the Pentagon were joined by thousands of others. In New York City, the day after the attack, a single photograph was pasted to a storefront window in SoHo. Others soon joined it as people gathered around the storefront. A call for more photographs was issued and "Here is New York" was born.
The resulting exhibition, which will be on view at the Corcoran Gallery through Nov. 11, bills itself as "a democracy of photographs." It seeks to replicate and expand on the impact of that initial window display of anonymous pictures. Around 2,000 photographs are displayed, simply clipped to wires without any apparent order or reason. There are no captions or credits and the work of professionals hangs next to that of amateurs — businessmen, firefighters, tourists, children and anyone else who happened to have a camera. Anyone who wanted to could and still can submit photos to be scanned into the collection, the best of which are printed digitally and displayed without regard for who took them.
The very purpose of photographing disaster is questioned in a photo on display. In it, a sign on posterboard questions the very purpose of photographing the tragedy. "I kept wondering what makes us think we can capture the loss, the pride and the confusion — the complexity — in a 4x6 glossy," its author wrote. In its own way, "Here is New York" is an attempt to answer that question. While any one photograph may only have been able to capture one scene, event, person or emotion, the collective whole adds up to much more than the sum of its parts.