December 23, 2007

My thanks to Cheryl Reeves, who recently reviewed Watching the World Change on the FEMINIST REVIEW BLOG. Quoth Reeves, in part:

“In David Friend’s compelling and movingly written examination of the photographic legacy of the terror-filled day of September 11th, the light is a protean character—bordering on the mystical. As it happened, precisely because the light was fantastic, photographers (amateur and professional) were out en masse on the city streets. Unwittingly, they found themselves in a unique position to record history as it unfolded when the first fireball exploded and then the second and then the gray-black smoking clouds roiled above blotting out the sun and later, when the choking dust clouds raced below through the streets of downtown Manhattan.

“It is striking to learn how many amateur photographs made it into the major newspapers and magazines. To be in the wrong place at the right time and get the tragic poetic angle was everything. More striking still, to learn how many of these people kept shooting at their own peril. More than a few said they felt as if God was with them, and they were merely an instrument.”