I have mixed feelings about the proliferation of 9/11 images that have flooded the airwaves and print media these past few days. Nearly every story and image is powerful and moving but at a certain point you can begin to feel you're being used.
I was looking for a photograph that meant something more than re-visiting the past when Len Prince sent me this picture. It's an iPhone snap of a contact sheet that he had never tried to print or publish but ten years later the picture makes a lot of sense.
It was taken on 9/12/01 near Ground Zero and is of the back window of a smashed-up police car that had been blown on top of another car. Someone had scrawled the date in the dust of 9/11 as both a record and - I like to think - a hope. 9/11 as we know changed everything, but it's what we do with 9/12 that counts.
For a moment it seemed like 9/12 had brought about an amazing togetherness and spirit in this country, but it didn't take long to disintegrate and go awry. Let's try to make this 9/12 something better.
7 comments:
I too feel that this photo has an inspiring yet eerie feel about it. It means more than it looks. Thanks for sharing it with us.
beautiful beautiful post. simple and poignant. really touching. thank you for this.
Amen.
i like the way you put that.
"... go awry..." has got to be the understatement of the year. Spot on post. Well put, Sir.
What a striking photo. Thanks for your post and for reminding us to look forward.
Thanks for this.
I avoided all coverage of that day: newspapers, TV, news shows, everything. I, too, think that it has become a caricature of what it could have been. Like you, in many ways it was squandered, smothered by ideology.
I went to the Newseum in DC this spring and went through their display and watched their video about 9/11. To see this again I realized that everything else pales by comparison. I left that area in tears, and noticed that there were multiple tissue boxes placed around the centerpiece of a destroyed antenna. I am not alone in mourning what happened that day, but I'm going to focus on this image that you show--it is what we do with it that matters. It's the going forward that makes a difference.
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