November 7, 2006

From Jeffrey Hogan, a London-based employee of eSpeed, a division of Cantor Fitzgerald, who lost many friends in the World Trade Center attacks…

Taking on the subject [of photography and September 11] was courageous as I imagine that, while part of you felt incomplete without your story being told, in the course of your research you had the unhappy and unenviable task of reviewing footage/scenes that may have gone beyond what was publicly acceptable or were images you may have otherwise chosen not to revisit.

While it's not a work a reader would intend on enjoying, I found myself simultaneously operating in three zones during the experience: admiring your craft, objectively observing each shattered stained glass window piece you were reassembling and being fearful of what might be on the next page.

Your precise word mining interrupted the rhythm for me - often I would need to step outside and nod yes that's exactly the definitive term - and the poignancy of some phrases had a palpable physicality which made me feel unnerved and veering off balance. Without being patronising I saw you as a weaver at the loom sifting through a mountain of ideas, quotes, opinions, emotions and images carefully selecting each strand of coloured thread. I felt your piece resonated in embracing and factually gathering, collating and sequencing the rush of simultaneous events so as to make sense of the vortex and construct an order to the super-collisions of that day and week.

On a technical level I saw you meticulously outlining your industry to the layman, placing in historical context the raw nuts and bolts grinding to churn out the global delivery of the nutgraph. My own reference point would be the complexity in deciphering arcane inner workings of multi-layered financial derivatives rotating across time zones, and I was struck by the clarity and urgency with which you set your table.

Aside from the positive, healing impact WTWC had on my own grieving process (by taking extra moments to revisit and honour lost friends), emotionally I felt your work was carefully non-sensationalised, and that your own trauma and bias were held at bay. I must confess that my own sense of cynicism about core human behaviour is deeper than your balanced reporting of the spectrum of reactions would seem to warrant. I thought it was brave for some photographers to admit they were seeking by-lines and plaudits rather than capturing history, and as you confirmed many contributors to the photo pool were more intent on commemorating themselves, externally projecting themselves into becoming a combatant or joining the I-Was There-Club rather than being noble. I found some of the city shrines gut-wrenching, but many were also symbols of misguided patriotism or the impotence of being unable to prevent that (or future) disaster(s). I think the portraits were not sacred objects of the divine but rather less subtle articles - acts of desperation from stunned souls. Also, I do think some of the pundits' analysis was overly complex - an attempt to reverse engineer layers of Zen meaning into what was a primal and bitter act.

My own thoughts of the value of the images, and I suppose the premise of your book, have evolved since we last spoke. One element of the 911 experience is that anyone and everyone's personal reactions are justified and have nothing whatsoever to do with proximity to Ground Zero or to having suffered a direct loss (or not). Certainly someone in Montana can be more permanently scarred than another living on Duane Street. This took me a while to get used to, that the concentric circles emanating from the geography of the event do not diminish in impact and in fact can grow exponentially larger the farther away one is from the dagger strike - just because I was affected directly doesn't validate my feelings over yours. While the images themselves are central to transmitting the experience to the masses, I have come to think that there is a danger of, rather than preserving or crystalsing an emotion, the image can displace true feelings and disconnect one from the experience - I have the totem, I don't have to search for and retrieve my own opinion – the 'big story' replaces my own.

Another factor in the image receding in importance is that while the frozen reproduction remains fixed, the interpretation of its cause and meaning will migrate as have other passages in history which change in shape and tone over time. The perception of this event will remain a moving target, defined more by the ongoing response and ensuing countermeasures than by itself. Therefore the images that matter are those that we carry inside ourselves of either loved ones or a simpler age. Not only is the camera becoming symbolic of the intrusion inherent in the recent loss of personal freedom, ultimately I think the image is superfluous in engendering the tolerance and forgiveness necessary to halt an escalation of the battle. Rather, it's possible to say that the fixation on those images is precisely what is ensuring a reoccurrence.

From Bruce Kanin, of Merrick, Long Island:

I worked for Citigroup Asset Management on the 36th floor of 7 World Trade Center. On the morning of September 11th, at about 15 minutes before 9am, [our] office window was sucked in and out as we heard a great noise outside. We rushed to the window ... and soon saw that one or more floors were on fire, with a kind of fireball coming out of them.

We stared for a few seconds and then realized that we'd better evacuate. We ran out of the office and called to the few people around to get to the stairs. On the stairs, we heard a thundering grow and realized that it was the sound of people running down.

…Three of us headed north on West Street along the Hudson River. I vaguely recall a plane flying south over the Hudson, but at this point my mind is fuzzy about that. What is clear is that we soon heard a loud noise from the south, and saw that WTC Tower Two had smoke coming out of it. That's when a feeling unlike any I've had came over me: the thought that I - we - could be effectively under attack and in a kind of war zone.

[A colleague] Josephine and I, Long Islanders, headed in the general direction of Penn Station, more than 50 blocks north. Amazingly… we found an empty, waiting cab, like the last 'copter out of Saigon. We took it to Penn, and caught, also amazingly, a Long Island Rail Road train that seemed to be waiting for us. It soon pulled out and we found ourselves in a macabre railroad car filled with cell phones buzzing going off and stories about "The Pentagon's been hit!"… "Logan Airport's been bombed"… "The State Department's been bombed"… "There are more plane attacks" and "The World Trade Towers are falling."

Eventually I made it home…and watched TV with my wife, like millions of others, in horror. By 5pm my horror was compounded by watching 7 World Trade Center - the building where I worked - collapse to the ground. I knew I was lucky and am grateful to this day, but the impact of 7 WTC falling still hit hard.