Unity And Remembrance

As it turns out, there are actually four photos of mine in the Here Is New York exhibit at the New-York Historical Society museum, not three. I didn't notice this one the first time I went last week but this week I saw it, and got overwhelmed all over again. That's four photos. Four photos.

Here is the one that I missed on my first trip to the museum.



I have been trying for the past week to reconcile the idea of having photos in a musuem with the subject matter of the photos. It's impossible for me. The only thing I can think of is this:

I was looking today at the museum's other collections, at history beyond the September 11 materials. One thing that struck me was the pin-back buttons that say United We Stand and Remember Pearl Harbor which date back to 1941 after the Japanese attack in Hawaii.

I think that those two sentiments, Unity and Rememberance, are what my four pictures are about. When I think of all those firefighters standing at attention in the street, forming a vast network of support for the families of the lost, that's unity. And the other pictures: torn clothing and damaged signs and that haunting airplane window, that's remembering.

The truth is I would have given anything to stop September 11 from happening but there wasn't anything I could do to stop it. The only thing I could do, in the aftermath, is believe in those two words Unity and Remembrance, in moments when I saw those words come to life is take a picture and freeze that moment in time, so that the uniting in memory will never end.

For more pictures from the WTC Traveling Memorial click here: Broken July 2002

Here Is New York 2007

I can't remember for certain anymore but it seems to me that I first read about the Here Is New York exhibit in one of the weekly news magazines, maybe Newsweek. And sometime during those numb first weeks after the September 11 attacks, I looked up the website and read about how the gallery at 116 Prince Street in SOHO, New York City, was accepting photos related to the attacks. They would scan them, and print out copies for sale and also to hang in the gallery as a simple but utterly powerful way to display in pictures what we all were struggling to say with words.

On the first weekend of November 2001, I flew from Minneapolis back to New York to see for myself up-close what I had seen that September morning from my company's office in Midtown. I decided that before I went down to the trade center site, I would stop at Here Is New York. I thought that viewing the pictures would help me gauge whether I was ready emotionally to handle looking at the actual site.

I remember standing in line around the corner from the gallery talking with two women behind me from Washington DC. They told me about the minutes they spent that morning, knowing a plane was headed their direction, assuming it was also going to be crashed into a building, but not knowing which building might be the target. I showed them the picture I was bringing to the exhibit. It was one I took in my company's office on September 13. It is hard to read the time but it was taken at 8:46 AM, exactly 48 hours after the first plane hit and a Tuesday in September became 9/11. I was in awe of the women's story. They were in awe that I had a photo.



Much to my surprise, the Here Is New York staff accepted my photo for their collection. They asked if they could keep it to scan and told me I could pick it up later. It was probably a year before I got it back in the mail; apparently they initially didn't count on people from outside of New York making contributions. Eventually, they allowed contributions through their website and I posted several more pictures there.

And with that first contribution, I became a photographer. I was invited to a party for the Here Is New York photographers. My name is listed on the website and in the Here Is New York book. I got a free copy of the book, and for a while, could walk into any bookstore and see that book with my name in it on the September 11 table or the September 11 shelf. It was strange to be in such a position, but then again, so many things were strange: the world had turned upside town when the towers fell and who could tell what normal was anymore? But gradually, over the course of years, the surreal feeling of that time, began to fade.

A few weeks ago, I read that the New York Historical Society was exhibiting photos from the Here Is New York collection starting on September 11, 2007 and going through the end of the year. I looked on their website for more information and saw my name listed as one of the photographers.

It didn't occur to me though until I went today that having my name listed on their website meant that I would have a photo in the exhibition. After all, my name is in the book but no photos of mine appear in it.

So I was shocked to find one of the pictures I had sent in years ago, hanging in the museum. And then I found another. And another. Three photos of mine, hanging in a museum in New York City. Unbelievable. Surreal, all over again.

Here are the photos that are displayed:





The two above were taken not in New York, but in St. Paul, Minnesota. Two retired officers from the Port Authority Police Department who had worked at the World Trade Center before and after the attacks, had acquired a number of objects found in the rubble and created a Traveling Memorial which they brought to St. Paul for the Taste of Minnesota festival during the Fourth of July holiday in 2002. These photos were taken at that exhibit.

I went to the exhibit 3 times while it was in St. Paul. Lieutenants Gene Smith and Chet Weekes were the first people I had spoken to who really could give me perspective on what had happened on September 11. And they were the first people who really understood how devastated I was: living in Minnesota I was isolated from New Yorkers who were having the same emotions I was, and it was a relief to discover that I wasn't reacting stangely compared to New Yorkers, although I was compared to Minnesotans.

I think Gene and Chet must have known this and when they ran into another woman who had also been spending time talking with them, they had the brilliant and simultaneous idea to introduce the two of us. So on the last day they were there, Gene told me there was someone I needed to meet. On the other side of the tent, Chet was telling her there was someone she needed to meet. Finally, they put the two of us together and we have been instant deeply close friends ever since. I would not have made it through the first anniversary and beyond without Zxy's friendship and I have Gene and Chet to thank for that.



On the trip to New York in November 2001, a day or two after I went to the Here Is New York exhibit, I was on my way to visit the friend I had stayed with during the terrifying afternoon of September 11. To reach her apartment, I got off the subway at Rockefeller Center, wound my way underground towards Fifth Avenue, and when I got to the street, found myself in the middle of a memorial service at St. Paul's Cathedral for two of the 343 firefighters who were killed in the collapse of the towers. This was the service for David Arce and Michael Boyle, childhood friends who served at the same firehouses, first in Brooklyn and then in Greenwich Village.

I took a few photos of the backs of the firefighters gathered to pay their respects, mainly so I could look back and really absorb that this very scene was being repeated nearly 350 times across the city, just for the firefighters alone. It was so silent as the families left the church that the click of my camera was the only sound on the street.

I eventually made copies of this photo and others I took at the same time, wrapped them in purple and black tissue paper and ribbons and, on the night before the first anniversary, placed them on the bumper of a firetruck in the firehouse where the both had worked. I addressed the packages to their surviving firefighter brothers. Months later, I received a letter from David Arce's mother, thanking me for the pictures. I corresponded with her for the next several years. She invited me to the firehouse for a plaque dedication ceremony on the second anniversary of the attacks in 2003. David's body was found in January 2002, in the remains of the North Tower, shielding civilians from the collapse.



That first time I saw the Here Is New York exhibit, standing in line to buy a print as the gallery prepared to close for the night, I recited my address out loud to the volunteer who was trying to get us through the checkout faster. A woman in front of me in line asked me if I was from Minneapolis. I said yes and asked her how she knew. She knew the name of my street, Xerxes, because it is unusual and because she herself was from Minneapolis. As we waited to buy our prints, we talked about the exhibit and also about seeing the actual site where the towers once stood. Both of us wanted to go, but neither of us wanted to go alone. We decided to take a cab down there together, and so we did, Bonnie and I, strangers from the same city facing together the unfathomable sight of the remants of the towers, half a country away in New York.

All this is what I think of when I see my pictures hanging in a museum. They are there anonymously, among others from that day and the weeks that followed, for people to wonder at, to think about, to reflect on. They hang there, just steps away from the recovered landing gear from one of the planes, the landing gear that never deployed that morning on a runway in Los Angeles after a routine cross-country trip like it was supposed to, and instead landed itself on the streets of New York. Landing gear, like the one on the plane that brought me from Minneapolis to New York City on September 10, 2001, just in time to be caught in the vast horror that was September 11, and that lead six years later to me, standing in a museum looking at my own photos hanging on the walls.

A picture tells a thousand words and I have no idea the words and stories people will remember, looking at my pictures. But these are the words and stories I remember. Here is, was and will always be, my New York.

For more pictures from the WTC Traveling Memorial click here: Broken July 2002

NYC 9/11 Memorial Field 6th Anniversary

The Sphere has stood in Battery Park since March of 2002 when it was moved from the World Trade Center site where it had been for three decades. It was placed in Battery Park as a temporary memorial and an eternal flame was lighted on the first anniversary of the attacks, September 11, 2002, in a ceremony following the reading of the names at the trade center site.



For the sixth anniversary of September 11, flags representing first responders who died in the attacks were placed around The Sphere as a Memorial Field.













The flags were on display from September 7 through 13, 2007.





The Sphere was heavily damaged by pieces of the falling towers.





More than 90 countries lost citizens in the September 11 attacks. Flags representing those countries lined the sidewalks around the Memorial Field.



Many people also designed flags to commemorate the attacks. My friend Gwen who designed this one says that families of those who died are still asking her to send them a flag, six years later.

Postcards Memorial

Many of the people who perished at the World Trade Center were from Staten Island. A memorial called Postcards looks across the water to where they once worked. Their names, their occupations, the companies they worked for, their birth dates are all listed on the stones representing each of them. The date the memorial was dedicated is listed. But nowhere is listed the one thing they have in common: the day all of them died.

Anticipating the Anniversary

A woman saw me taking the picture below. "I never can get it all in on my camera phone", she said. "It's a beatiful building." And then perhaps because it was another September day and the sky was again a clear blue, she added, "I miss the Towers."



For the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, sunflowers were planted around the city. On the morning of the anniversary, they appeared all around the World Trade Center site, their stems woven into the surrounding chain link fences. Sunflowers and sunny blue skies: this is the weight of the days, the wait of these days, leading up to the inevitable remembering.



"It's on a Tuesday again this year." I keep hearing that, again and again, especially in these last few days of summer, even on this holiday weekend when everything is caught in the still dazzling rays of the sun. How could anything bad happen when the light hits the water just so? Maybe it's just me listening for it but over and over I hear it. "See that empty space between the buildings? That huge-ass gap? That's where the Towers once stood..."