For most Americans, and particularly for New Yorkers, the planes crashing into the twin towers, their burning, and collapse was, and is still a horrific, traumatic event to be remembered. Even now almost three months later, the image of the smoldering ground zero is still seen at the opening of some news programs. In addition, in New York it appears that everyone who had a camera has his or her own pictures to show and stories to tell.

I am writing elsewhere, in a forthcoming issue of the British Gestalt Journal, about the impact of these events on people seeking therapy and what it's like to work as a therapist in a trauma zone. What I would like to focus on here is the witnessing of the traumatic event by so many people, their taking photos as it was happening, and their attendance at exhibits that played back traumatic experience. I would also like to document this piece with my own photographs.

The photography exhibits

There are three major photography exhibits that feature the events of September 11th and its aftermath. Two are downtown, "Here is New York," and the "September 11th project." Uptown, The New York Historical Society is sponsoring an exhibit called New York September 11 by Magnum photographers. These famous Magnum photographers were in town for a meeting and many of their pictures have been featured in the media. In addition, New York University, also close to the site, created a faculty/student/alumni exhibit called "Responses." I would like to focus on the three exhibits that have been drawing large crowds of people

The photography exhibit "Here is New York" is in a gallery at 116 Prince Street in Shoo. The exhibit has received over four thousand photographs. They have scanned these photos taken by famous photographers, as well people in the neighborhood who made snapshots and printed them as 8x 10 images. These images are taped to the wall or strung overhead on lines, with no photographers named. The gallery is selling the pictures as donations to charity. The people who put together the exhibit are overwhelmed by the response. Since the exhibit opened over a month ago, there have been long lines of people coming to stand silently or talk about what they also saw. Many purchase photos of the tragedy and its aftermath. I volunteered at this exhibit soon after it opened.

The New York times, in writing about "Here is New York," said, "Like the soup kitchens, set up by the Tribeca restaurateurs to feed the rescue workers, the exhibition is another instance of New Yorkers trying to contribute to the physical or emotional mending of the city by pursuing their usual lines of work, only differently…" The show represents the photography world's attempt to enable people to experience one of the main facts about the tragedy - that it was witnessed and photographed by more people than any other event of similar magnitude "… They testify to the taking of a photograph as a common human response, a way to deal with reality almost beyond comprehension."(New York Times p. E4 Oct.9, 2001).

The second exhibit, the September 11th project, is at 26 Wooster Street, in Soho. This exhibit features local residents' snapshots with their comments about the events. The project was initiated by a Soho resident and artist, another artist, and a fireman/photographer who report that thousands of people from every part of society are taking pictures in their community for the first time. The unprecedented grief from trauma and loss, and the need to come to terms with recent events, has created a need for people to express themselves and share with others. In many cases words alone are not sufficient. Photos and text together have merged for some people as the only response to the thought "I cannot believe my eyes."

Both of these exhibits feature similar photographs, images that have appeared in newsmagazines - the towers burning, the firemen marching into the buildings, the burned out wreck of a fire truck, people fleeing for their lives in the dust cloud as the building crumples down, the latticed façade still partially standing, the ruins with rescuers working, the still life of dusted pottery in an apartment and dust covered fruit from the Amish market. We have all seen these in the media. What is different is to take a closer look, and as you look, you realize all these eyes that have seen the flaming towers (from across the Hudson, over the rooftops in Long Island City, from a ferry, people streaming across the Brooklyn bridge with the burning tower in the background) from their own vantage points. The local photographers have also captured the response of New Yorkers in their own neighborhoods, as well as the many memorials scattered downtown. There are two real time videos of the events, captured by different amateur photographers from different vantage points.

The Magnum exhibit, in a museum gallery features fewer pictures, large professsionally printed blowups of the towers burning, the collapse,people fleeing and the rescue work, as well as ground zero soon after the collapse. The pictures, some in black and white, others in color, are compelling in their ability to capture in a moment of experience the full terror of the event. The exhibit also features a video.

Experiencing the exhibits

I came to these exhibits after doing a month of crisis work with clients, many of whom had viewed the events close up, lost friends or loved ones, lived across the street and saw horrific images, people jumping out of buildings. (I have spent last month crying with my clients). I also contributed my own pictures to both exhibits. However, I was unprepared for what an emotional impact seeing all these photos would have a month later.

The videos

The first experience I had in the Prince Street gallery was watching the video of the burning towers in real time (I had witnessed and photographed this very event from the same vantage point as the video). I watched the video three times over a week. The first time I joined a group of about a dozen, mostly young and middle age men, who talked about where they were, what they saw as they watched it with me. In this first viewing the men were trying to understand why the building collapsed. It happened so suddenly. In the third viewing the group was similar and asked to have it re-wound trying to make sense of how it had happened so suddenly - as Jonathan Shell said, it was "annihilated, vanished." The second group was men and women who just sat there still, glum, and silent for the whole time.

The Magnum exhibit video was shot on the streets adjoining the burning towers. The action is jerky. The videographer shifted from the sight of the first burning tower from the vantage point of street level, to people's faces as they watched, the chaos on the street as people either watched in horror, or fled as the second plane hit and the second tower burst into flame. Throughout the video the debris fell like dark, snowy clumps. To me the most poignant images were of the lines of young firemen, with tanks strapped to their backs, in black and yellow walking mostly single file into the lobby of tower I, as the public was racing up the stairs from the concourse getting out, hurried along by the police. As the tower suddenly collapses in black smoke, the camera turns dark and stops, and the people in the audience watching this video just sat there silently, waiting in the dark.

Response to the pictures

One of my jobs volunteering at one of the exhibits was to be available if anyone wanted to buy a picture or just to talk. Most people just wanted to look. Some spoke to me as they walked around the gallery.

"I saw the building come up, and then I saw it come down," said a neighborhood artist.

A man from Massachusetts, who had to visit New York, had driven in, and he spoke in broken syntax, saying, "What hit me as I came into the city, that it was physically not there"

A New York woman who was out of the country when it happened burst into tears. "I don’t know why I am so upset!" she exlaimed.

Another man who kept showing up told me that his house burned down when he was a child and he just needed to keep coming. He brought his digital camera and kept photographing the pictures in the exhibit.

Another man, when he saw the video of the towers burning, left the gallery. He said "My son escaped from tower one; I can't bear to watch it."

One of the more powerful images in the exhibit was the burned camera (the same Cannon EOS I have) and press badge of a local resident photographer, William Biggart, who rushed downtown as everyone else was running away. His digital camera recorded the collapsing of the tower over him as he was buried and died. In the local September 11th exhibit, there is a series of snapshots taken by a man fleeing one of the towers. As he fled for his life, he remembered that he had a camera in his pocket and shot the debris falling in front of him, part of the fuselage from one of the planes on the sidewalk, and while fleeing, the dust, smoke, and panic following the collapse.

Why are these photographs so compelling/The meaning of pictures? Photography as exposure therapy

Peter Plaines, in writing for Newsweek, describes the exhibit as "inundation therapy." "If something bothers you, plunge into it…Hey we feel better already!"

That is what people are doing, not only New Yorkers, but visitors from all over. They are bringing in their own pictures and returning to the exhibits over and over again. People taking their own pictures, showing them to friends, and setting up albums of their own are all probably engaging in a form of exposure therapy. Researchers on recoveryfrom trauma espouse exposure therapy as the most effective treatment. In exposure therapy, the patients close their eyes and imagine the traumatic event. In Gestalt therapy, in working with trauma, we also assist the client in recapturing the trauma and telling us about it. The photography exhibits present in vivo exposure therapy and these exhibits in the downtown New York neighborhoods and at New York University may promote recovery. It is a form of community therapy.

Let us not forgot.

Remembering the event and acknowledging the suffering is important not only for individuals but also for the community. We have the holocaust memorials, war memorials etc. All over New York there are sidewalk memorials, continuous memorial services, ands discussions about future memorials at the site. These exhibits are a living memory.

Students at Stuyvesant high school, a few blocks within view of the world trade center put out a special issue featuring photos and student essays on what it was like to be so close to the burning towers and to see such horror. The student photographer, Ethan Moses wrote in his introduction, "I felt guilty for days running from the dust cloud of the second World Trade Center tower collapsing, guilty that on top of being so lucky as to escape with my life, I had the nerve to shoot pictures of the demise of thousands." He ended his his article with a plea for others to take pictures to capture the present suffering and unity in America, saying, "Make sure no one ever forgets."

Like other unbelievable horrors, the need to not forget is essential to the acknowledgement that it happened. We remember, we tell others long after the event, and we also embrace what emerges that is positive - community building as a healing process.

Getting a personal perspective on the event

Why do people still come? I believe it is the personal reminder for people who were close. Yes, it did happen. It is processing for people who experienced a piece of the event. I have heard them say, "Yes, this is where I saw the burning," or "This is my train station." One saw it from the pier in New Jersey and another from the roof of his building. They all express the need to share time and place, to retell the event.

Beyond this, though, for people who were not there, but clearly affected, there was also a need to come downtown and see the pictures, to hear the stories and then to buy the pictures to take home to Berlin, Atlanta etc. They appeared to have a need to connect to the event on a more personal level. I received a dozen phone calls from friends all over world, "Are you ok?," "What did you experience?" Hence there appears to be a need to experience the event from a closer perspective.

My own photographic journey

I am no different than thousands of New Yorkers who captured the tragedy and its aftermath on film. I have been obsessively photographing the smoking, smoldering ruins, the neighborhood, the fireman, the neighborhood shrines ofcandles and flowers. Almost daily, I photograph the gap in the downtown skyline from my window. I do so even at night, as the floodlights illuminate the scene and smoke curls over the sky. Like so many other New Yorkers, I took pictures from the moment I opened my curtains on September 11th and saw the first tower burning from my bedroom window until today. I continue to visit ground zero and the many street memorials that people have set up.

What I would like to do is present a slide show of my own pictures, taken from September 11 on. In capturing a moment of my community, I supported my own healing. Not only was there tragedy and horror, but also people in my neighborhood who came together for support, peace, to honor the heroes, grieve for the missing, donate time, money, and to show a renewed communal sprit. Downtown New York became a small town and the rest of the world joined in.

Living downtown, I too was an eyewitness to the tragedy from my 16th floor window, facing south, about 15 blocks away. I opened the curtains of my bedroom picturewindow on that Tuesday morning and noticed the right tower smoking, with a gash in its side. I turned on the radio and as the newscasters were puzzling as to the cause of the accident, I also grabbed my camera. My good camera (Canon, EOS) had no battery power, so I used the more limited point and shoot. As I was watching and shooting, the second plane hit, the entire left tower suddenly burst into orange flames. Even when it was clear, the unthinkable had happened, terrorism, I could not leave the window and kept taking pictures as first one and than the other tower suddenly collapsed. As evening approached, the smoke and clouds were still visible as the sun set.

Below 14th street

For the first two days, the bridges and tunnels into Manhatten were closed. No one except residents was allowed below 14th street. Each neighborhood had its own barricades. I live adjacent to Houston Street, which was barricaded; you could not enter Soho (which got its name because it is south of Houston). Huge black dump trucks, heavy construction equipment, lined the streets. The streets of Soho were empty, and people gathered at the barricades to just stare southward at the smoking gap further downtown. Two days after the collapse, it rained and the wind shifted, carrying soot and smoke uptown. We wore masks in the street.

Downtown we held candlelight vigils, first in Washington Square Park and Union Square on 14th street. Candles and flowers, and written memorials appeared in the parks. People wrote their thoughts, and there were pleas for peace. Pictures of the missing appeared everywhere in the parks, on the streets, and in storefronts. Flags were displayed.

The neighborhood firehouses became neighborhood shrines and meeting places. People brought flowers and candles. Each neighborhood in New York City has a firehouse. There were 343 firemen lost. Children from all over America sent letters and pictures. My local firehouse on Jones Street lost 10 men out of 25. The firemen became our heroes.

On all the walls of the firehouses were letters and pictures from children. Too many of them featured the same image-whatever the age: two towers and two planes.

In the past week ordinary citizens can now walk close to ground zero. I walked there for the first time with my camera a few days ago. My husband lived two blocks from the site and I know the neighborhood well. It's as close as we can go. I watched the winter garden being built from Harry's window. Again, people were looking silently, but many like me were taking pictures - their own pictures. On a later visit one Saturday there were crowds of people, most of them with cameras. (The viewing points to Ground zero appear to have become tourist sites.) We have seen pictures in the papers and magazines, but it appears we want our own images, seen with our own eyes, taken with our own cameras - to hold and to remember.

Also close to ground zero is a memorial to the rescue workers and airline personnel and victims. It essentially is a recapturing of the other memorials around the city that were spontaneously constructed with candles, flowers, and row upon row of stuffed animals amidst the pictures of the missing and the dead. The church facades close to ground zero are posted with candles, tributes, flowers, pictures of the missing and prayers.

Finally, this one image taken in Union Square a few days after September 11, a tired Miss Liberty says it all. We stop and pause for replenishment, but the community spirit continues.

References

Here is New York. Photography Exhbit. Oct-December 2001. 116 Prince Street, Soho, New York www.hereisnew york.org

New York September 11 by Magnum Protographers. Exhibit, New York Historical Society, November 2001.

New York September 11 Magnum Photographers (2001). New York: Powerhouse Books.

September 11 Photo Project, 26 Woodster Street, Soho, New York.
www.sept 11photo.org

The Spectator: The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper. New York: 345 Chambers Street