Warning

 

Close

Confirm Action

Are you sure you wish to do this?

Confirm Cancel
BCM
User Panel

Posted: 12/20/2001 8:38:09 AM EDT
[URL]http://www.dallasnews.com/attack_on_america/terror/articles/STORY.eae23ea0db.b0.af.0.a4.8a1f8.html[/URL]

related content
• "Here is New York": A democracy of photographs (Official site)
[URL]http://www.hereisnewyork.org/[/URL]

'Beautiful in a terrible way': NY photo exhibit captures the story of Sept. 11
12/20/2001

[img]http://a1416.g.akamai.net/f/1416/744/1d/www.dallasnews.com/img/12-01/1220soho.jpg[/img]
Patrick Witty / Special to DMN
The "Here is New York" photo exhibit in Soho has attracted attention - much of it by word of mouth.

By CAROLYN BARTA / The Dallas Morning News

"The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition." - E.B. White, 1949.

Related content
• "Here is New York": A democracy of photographs (Official site)
NEW YORK - These words are posted in a makeshift photo gallery in Soho that daily draws New Yorkers and tourists to view powerful images of the World Trade Center disaster.
The exhibit is called "Here is New York," the same as the title of E.B. White's essay of a half century ago. The writer was reacting to news that the Russians had developed a hydrogen bomb. Today, the words eerily describe the scene of terrorist attacks on New York City on Sept. 11.

On weekends, the line outside what once was the Agnes B dress shop at 116 Prince St. stretches around the block. Visitors wait 45 minutes to see the photos of the catastrophe and to buy computer-generated copies at $25 a print, benefiting the Children's Aid Society WTC Relief Fund.

The visitors are teachers, students, stockbrokers, cops, firefighters, and steelworkers. They're tourists from Mississippi, Washington, D.C., and Germany. They spend hours gazing at hundreds of the 2,000 images that have been collected - of billowing smoke, falling buildings, fleeing pedestrians, soot-covered apartments, paper-strewn streets, awe-struck observers, heroic rescue workers, sidewalk shrines, and grieving survivors.

Some of the photos are familiar images; others are unique. Some were shot by professionals; others by children using disposable cameras. They are clipped to wires, unadorned by titles or captions.

"All of them are terrific and beautiful in a terrible way," said Michael Shulan, a writer who owns the building where the exhibit is staged.

He and some friends developed the idea of a "democracy of photographs" - those submitted by photographers of all stripes - in an exhibition that would help people work through the angst of the attack.

"The week after it happened, it seemed like everyone in New York had a camera around his neck," Mr. Shulan said.
Link Posted: 12/20/2001 8:41:59 AM EDT
[#1]
He and his friends - including New Yorker photographer Gilles Peress, photography instructor Charles Traub, and curator Alice Rose George - put out the word that they were accepting photos and looking for volunteers to work at the exhibit. When the show opened two weeks after Sept. 11, it had 60 images.

Chris Cawley, 34, an aspiring New York photographer who graduated from Southern Methodist University and worked in Dallas for 10 years, has been volunteering at the exhibit for weeks because, he said, "it's therapeutic."

"It's therapeutic for a lot of people," he said.

On the morning of Sept. 11, he was driving around looking for a parking place in Greenwich Village. He said he had "given up on corporate America" and was taking a photography course at Pratt Institute.

When he heard the first jetliner crash, he retrieved his equipment from his car trunk and began shooting pictures. In the days following, he concentrated on the heroes working around ground zero. Three of his images hang in the exhibit.

One shows New Yorkers greeting rescue workers with a hand-painted thank-you sign. Another shows a New York Daily News tabloid cover, anchored by two memorial candles, that read, erroneously as it turned out, "10,000 feared dead."

Mr. Cawley, who serves as director of sales and volunteers, said the exhibit has raised more than $900,000. By the time it closes on Dec. 24, it probably will have raised $1 million, he said.

Best sellers

The biggest sellers among the photographs include several versions of the towers before they were destroyed, one of firefighters raising an American flag over the rubble, and the image of a jagged cross created when windows were blown out of a nearby building.
Sam Myers, 35, another former Dallas resident, is among the 200 volunteers who have worked during the course of the three-month exhibit. A former stockbroker who grew up in Highland Park and graduated from Texas A&M, Mr. Myers also is studying photography. He feels he is helping people traumatized by the tragedy.

Some who come in, he said, were told by friends that they are in a picture. Others just want to talk about where they were and what their personal situation was on the day of the disaster.

One New Yorker, he said, bought 850 images at a cost of more than $22,000.

Vickie Dodd, a pharmaceutical company worker from Indianola, Miss., saw the exhibit while on a holiday trip with her sister. She bought 17 photos, costing almost $500. She said she didn't know what she would do with them; she was just moved to buy them.

Roberta Brown of Washington, D.C., said she has collected artwork from around the world. She described as "pieces of art" such images as a soot-covered tea set and the dusty statue of a man on a park bench with a laptop.
Link Posted: 12/20/2001 8:42:44 AM EDT
[#2]

Others are more personal. One showed a woman feeding her baby on a rooftop in Brooklyn with a smoking tower across the river; another featured the silhouette of a woman from behind, talking on a cellphone as she looked at one of the burning buildings. There's a photo of a pink orchid left in the broken window of a smashed car; another of a lone man reading a piece of paper picked from a street strewn with dusty office files.

Gloria Zicht, a social worker who lives in Manhattan, bought a picture of a fireman amid the rubble with his hands covering his face.

"It seemed to capture the whole scene," she said.

But why would she want to be reminded of it so vividly?

"I don't think we should forget it," she responded.

As for the exhibit, she said, "This is such a New York thing. It was just spontaneous."

Other exhibits

Other New York galleries also are featuring photo exhibits. Top photojournalists from The New York Times, New York Post, New York Daily News and El Diario La Prensa newspapers are exhibiting their work at the Bolivar Arellano Gallery. Proceeds from the sales benefit survivors of firefighters and police officers killed in the attack. The New York Historical Society is featuring a collection. A smaller charity exhibit is being shown on Soho's Wooster Street.
But "Here is New York" has attracted the most attention - much of it by word of mouth - because of its scope, inclusiveness, and intimacy.

Mr. Shulan said the demand to see and buy the photographs has been so great that he is negotiating to display the exhibit in 2002 at the New York Public Library. He also wants to take it on the road, publish a book, and sell the photos on the project's website, www.hereisnewyork.org.

"We really feel these pictures should go out to as many people as want to see them," he said.

Shortly after the doors closed on a recent weeknight, a fire engine and another vehicle from FDNY Squad No. 1 in Brooklyn pulled up outside the gallery. A half dozen firefighters, still in rescue gear from a day at work at ground zero, were granted an after-hours visit. They quietly walked through the two-room gallery.

The squad had lost 12 men and both of its firetrucks in the disaster.

"I felt good after seeing it," said Bill Spiess, the firefighter who arranged the visit. "I wanted the other guys to see it."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/attack_on_america/terror/articles/STORY.eae23ea0db.b0.af.0.a4.8a1f8.html
(c) 2001 DallasNews.com
Close Join Our Mail List to Stay Up To Date! Win a FREE Membership!

Sign up for the ARFCOM weekly newsletter and be entered to win a free ARFCOM membership. One new winner* is announced every week!

You will receive an email every Friday morning featuring the latest chatter from the hottest topics, breaking news surrounding legislation, as well as exclusive deals only available to ARFCOM email subscribers.


By signing up you agree to our User Agreement. *Must have a registered ARFCOM account to win.
Top Top