Thoughts and photographs, World Trade Centre: 11th September 2001

Here is the first thing I wrote after my experience of the morning of September 11th:

I got up around 8:30, earlier than usual, because I was going to talk to Rafi and I wanted to have a cup of coffee and look over my portfolio first. I put all the relevant work in my portfolio and put it, along with some dirty clothes (for airbrushing) and my cell phone in my bag. Because of the huge HVAC unit across the street, almost no outside noise came into our apartment. I took a shower around 8:45 and when I got out Annie was sitting by the window smoking a cigarette. Annie didn’t have a job yet, and that made her nervous so she was usually up as soon as anyone else got up. She was sitting on one of the benches we had made together in the spring looking out the window and she said there was a lot of smoke in the air or something and I remember responding, as I pulled my shoes on, “maybe the world trade centre is on fire?” Annie said she was going up to the roof to see what was going on. I grabbed my camera as I walked out the door because I thought the smoke might create an effect similar to the one in the fog photographs I had taken in August from the street below our apartment. I thought Gina had 24already gone to work, but she had actually gotten into the shower while I was getting dressed and somehow we hadn’t seen each other. Brennan and Andrew were already up and out of the apartment. It was now 8:55. I walked out onto the street and immediately took the first photograph as I walked up Greenwich. The sky was full of 8V2 by 11 sheets of paper floating to the ground like snow. There was an aspect of magical realism to it all … I was discovering that the largest office building in the world had exploded and the only visible evidence is copier paper. The thousands of papers in the sky kept me from looking at the carnage underfoot. They floated to the ground like confetti … all the heavy stuff fell instantly, but the paper drifted in the sky for a long time afterwards. I remember stopping in front of the fire station at the corner of Liberty (where I had taken my fog photographs). From that corner the view was particularly powerful because the perspective was so extreme and the height of the building always evoked that classic feeling of sky-scraper vertigo. For weeks later, I would have nightmares about standing below tall buildings and looking up at them … a fear of heights from the ground. A truck came out of the station behind my right shoulder as I was taking photographs. I walked by that fire station every day … I remember Heather talking before she left for Barcelona about how hot the firemen were. I was not sure what was going on, but I was taking photographs with my right hand and trying to call Annie with my left … the network was already swamped, so nobody’s cell phones worked. The street was crowded with commuters, but no-one seemed to know what was going on. From where I was standing, it looked like there was a fire on the far side of the south tower (my view of the north tower was obstructed by the south tower, so I could not see the extent of the damage).

I was trying to recreate the composition of the fog photograph from the week before. I was holding the camera in front of my face and I was zooming in on the top of the south tower when the second plane hit from the opposite side. I saw the impact through the lens and closed the shutter. I remember looking down at my camera to make sure I had taken a photograph before turning to run away. I had. I felt the explosion in my stomach, I felt the heat on my face, but because I was already looking through the camera, the image that I saw was bound by the rectangular viewfinder and only lasted for 1/250th of a second. Nobody had any idea what was going on, but 25by now rumours of planes were circulating everywhere. It was pretty frantic for a few seconds right after the impact, but once the initial blaze of the explosion died down, people just stood around looking. The fire department had blocked off Greenwich and it didn’t look like I could get back to the apartment the way I had come, so I kept trying to get Annie on the phone. I remember worrying about her being the only person other than me stupid enough to stand under a burning building and take photographs. Though, it’s worth mentioning that it never even occurred to me that the buildings might fall over.

As things settled, I looked at my watch and realized I still had some time before I had to meet Rafi. I began walking up Broadway and I stopped near J&R to buy another roll of film. When the man charged me $6 I thanked him for not charging me $60 because I would have bought it anyway. Everyone was saying that a plane had hit the Pentagon and Fort Knox. I nearly got my film developed at a 20 minute processing place on Broadway right below canal. I went to get a cup of coffee on that block near the Pearl Paint frame store. I found the Lifeform office and buzzed up. I got upstairs and they told me Rafi had left as soon as the first plane hit. “He’s Israeli”, a woman at the desk remarked (i.e. anyone who is accustomed to terrorism runs away from it instead of running towards it). I asked if I could use the phone while I was there. I couldn’t get a call through to Essex, so I called Clelia (who, mind you, had only arrived home the night before). She started crying when I said hello. I was standing on a fire escape with a portable phone, next to some computer guy who shared the office with Rafi. I had just left a message for Sophie when the south tower collapsed. The smoke made it hard to see it fall, but it was obvious when it was no longer there … the plume of dust from the collapse cast a shadow all the way down Broadway, so the whole street looked like a badly lit movie set. I started walking up town and my shoes (the one’s Mila bought me for my 21st birthday that never fit me) were killing my feet so I walked in my socks. I was on a cobbled street (just below Claire’s apartment) when the second tower fell down. I continued up through Washington Square park. I was walking past the public library (was Brennan there?) when I finally got a hold of Annie and Gina at Rachel’s apartment. That was the first time I thought of the studio Annie and I had applied for. I stopped on 6th Avenue and got $600 out of two different ATM machines, just in case. Next I stopped 26at Pete’s to make some phone calls (and get a new pair of shoes … I still had 30 blocks to Clelia’s and I had begun the morning two blocks from the bottom of Manhattan). I called Pete at work, I called the Kuntz’s. Pete came home and walked me up to 86th street. Somehow, Bunting got through on the cell phone as I passed the Museum of Natural History.

21 October 2001

I was holding the camera in front of my face and I was zooming in on the top of the south tower when the second plane hit from the opposite side. I saw the impact through the lens and closed the shutter. I remember looking down at my camera to make sure I had taken a photograph before turning to run away. I had. I felt the explosion in my stomach and heat on my face, but because I was already looking through the camera, the image that I saw was bound by the rectangular viewfinder and only lasted for 1/250th of a second. It was strange to have such a visceral experience mitigated by a lens: it means, among other things, that the photograph that remains is the same as the memory I have. What I remember most vividly was a feeling of excitement. This may sound perverse, but it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. The sky that morning was bluer and clearer than I had seen it before and the explosion was a brilliant cadmium orange; two fields of colour—spectral opposites—interrupted by the hard metallic verticals of the building. The composition of the visual image coupled with the sound, vibration, smell, and heat was an overwhelmingly sensual experience. It was precisely the terror/ecstasy phenomenon that Burke and Kant employed to explain the sublime. It was sublime in the sense of Burke’s definition … “the experience of the sublime is so overwhelming it makes reasoning impossible.”

Burke said, “there is something so overruling in whatever inspires us with awe, in all things that belong ever so remotely to terror, that nothing can stand in their presence.” He describes this awe as “a pleasure that turns on pain. Those things in nature that cause terror by their association with potential danger are sources of the sublime … these things are capable of producing delight, not pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror” (taken from A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful). I was personally so 27scared and so confused that I was overcome by a sensation of ecstasy; it felt exciting—the “delightful horror” Burke describes.

I realize much more now how my experience of that morning was changed because I had the camera with me. From the moment I stepped out of my door, I was looking for an interesting image … and though this may seem incidental, I think it gave me a certain predisposition that affected my relationship to the ensuing situation enormously. Understanding the situation “through a lens” gave me a comfortable distance from what was actually going on. Eventually, that distance was coupled with a sense of urgency … I did not understand what was going on, but I knew that it was important that I document it. The urgency, in turn, gave me a role in the situation, made me feel like an active participant (perhaps more so than a victim). The role as documentor also meant that I was focused on the “significance” of the event before I had fathomed or apprehended what had actually happened … I was more aware of other people’s reactions than my own. It was “beautiful” and “significant”, but it was not “real” (in many respects it remains “unreal” today). I remember my hands shaking and my heart racing, but I don’t remember any impulse to flee. I was excited and intrigued and terrified, but not afraid that something would happen to me. I wonder now how much of this had to do with the camera?