Here Is New York: A Democracy of Photographs
Photograph 2929 shows such scraps at rest, where we can read a fragment whose calm tone was mocked by the catastrophe: “…and D. Stubbs understood that Mr. Carroll was contemplating…”
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Chicago is the first city to host “Here Is New York,” a project housed in a SoHo storefront where volunteers continue to scan, print, and exhibit the photographs that keep coming in of apocalyptic dust, twisted steel, and distraught faces. The photographers range from tourists to master photojournalist Gilles Peress, one of the exhibit’s organizers. (Indeed, staff members at the Chicago exhibit accept photos about September 11 no matter where or when they were taken.) Perspectives multiply on the project’s Web site (www.hereisnewyork.org), where a menu sorts the images by their vantage on Ground Zero according to eight different compass points (north, south, southwest, etc) and 22 other categories, including “flags,” “firemen,” “onlookers,” and “WTC-pre 9/11.” The images in Chicago are arranged in no discernible order–although number 1484, of falling bodies, seems purposely placed in a spot easy to miss.
“I don’t trust words. I trust pictures,” Peress said after the events of September 11. But I found that words were my way of comprehending this daunting heap of testimony. I looked for photographs with texts. In number 2552 and number 2501, handwritten signs point to an impromptu morgue, and a graffito in number 1205 says, “Words fail. We have failed.” Photograph 2308 shows a sign addressed to “All of You Taking Photos,” which reads: “I wonder if you really see whats here or if you’re so concerned with getting that perfect shot that you’ve forgotten this is a tragedy site, not a tourist attraction. As I continually had to move ‘out of someone’s way’ as they carefully tried to frame this place [of] mourning, I kept wondering what makes us think we can capture the pain, the loss and the pride & the confusion–this complexity–onto a 4 x 5 glossy.”
We are all Yankee fans. –Thomas
The most compelling pictures, though, are not the up-close shots of Ground Zero. The ones that speak to most of us are the many that show New Yorkers helplessly watching from a distance–from rooftops in Brooklyn, from the New Jersey shore, from high-rise windows, from park benches. Or on TV. Framed in the foreground, these viewers are our stand-ins. As one sign in number 5375 states: “You are alive.” Which means that, one way or another, you saw this happen and now must make sense of it.
