September 9, 2006

The e-mails, letters, and notes come in from those wanting to talk about their September 11...

From Ariel Ruiz i Altaba, in Switzerland:
Now that I see more images, I remember I shot most of the "tower inferno" from my balcony on Bleecker St at the time. I managed to set a medium format camera on a tripod and shoot lots of rolls, even using color filters to change the contrast of the sky, first thinking it was a little thing. The images, some strangely disturbing, have not yet left my drawers. Voila, some images and experiences are too pungent, too personal, too internally disrupting to work with them. Perhaps one day.

From Shekhar Iyer, in India:
9/11 was devastating. I lost good friends from New York. I wished I could have been there to be with the grieving family but visa was stopped for 6 months from India and there was heavy rush…. I look at the pics every day to remember my friends. Why do people fight? Money power property. These politicians stink. They start everything and then try to comfort people. Politicians have spoiled the world. Recently there was a blast in trains where 500 people died…. I recently opened a non-governmental charity trust to treat poor people free of charge. They wanted money to give me a certificate for running the trust. I refused and it took almost a year to get my papers legally. Had I paid I would have got it in a week. Price is heavy for such good things. Wherever u go u find corruption…. My heartfelt feelings for your fellow Americans.

From Sondra Boyd, in Ohio:
What was I, a regular person, not some famous writer or photographer, doing on September 11, 2001? It was a normal day. [I was] sitting in an office doing my usual work, with no television within seeing distance, no radio in hearing distance, no window which to look out and to see and enjoy the sunshine of the beautiful fall day.

My daughter called me [two times and] related the terrible news. [She was] trying to describe the horrible pictures and events that followed, with tears in her voice. She was very hard to understand, barely able to put two thoughts together to make a complete sentence. It was all just so unbelievable. We ask[ed] our "Boss” [if] we could turn on his television or radio and see what was going on. He said no…, that if it was that big, we could see it on the evening news.

Little did any of us know how this one act would change our world and the way we looked at another's world. It's still just so… hard for me, a Christian, to understand how one human being can do the terrible things that they do, to another human being -- not only the attacks on 9-11 but every day such as you see and hear on the television and in the newspapers: the wars that are started just because one believes in God one way and another...