"[This book] embodies the Buddhist wisdom about change, life, and the
world more than anything written after the events of that day."
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September 10, 2006

A SCENE GROWS IN BROOKLYN

Here is the image, by Thomas Hoepker of Magnum Photos, mentioned in Sunday's compelling Frank Rich column in The New York Times. Taken in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on September 11, 2001, it shows a disorientingly tranquil and schizophrenic scene: a handful of young people, as if on a lunch break or taking a breather from a bike ride, while catastrophe looms in the distance. "It's a kind of troubling picture," Hoepker says in Watching the World Change. "The sun was shining....It's possible they lost people and cared. [But] the idyllic quality turned me off."

It took the photographer four years before he felt inclined to publish it, fearing that the image, if shown too soon after the attacks, might have invited a certain complacency in the viewer, instead of the outrage or anguish the situation demanded. Indeed, the picture's postmodern stasis didn't meet any of our standard expectations of what a September 11 photograh should look like.

"Over time, with perspective, it grew in importance," Hoepker now says. "It's a very contemporary picture: The bright colors are up front [but] it has that touch of neutrality, a coolness, a bit of a distance to suffering and not trusting of emotions.... It took a while for the news to sink in. It took a while to know how to react."

Photo (c) Copyright: Thomas Hoepker/Magnum Photos

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