As America marked the fifth anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attack, countless books, TV shows and movies commemorated the event that now seems to bifurcate U.S. history into ‘‘before’’ and ‘‘after.’’
As it recedes into the past, 9/11 remains the kind of event that allows a multiplicity of views, from personal accounts of people who witnessed it, to survivors’ stories, and the grief of those who lost loved ones, to sober analysis by social commentators and political scientists. Among these, it is hard to imagine a book that will carry its burden better than this collection of pictures by the esteemed art photographer Joel Meyerowitz.
The title, ‘‘Aftermath,’’ precisely describes the content of Meyerowitz’s extraordinary images, which provide a record — an ‘‘archive’’ — of the World Trade Center site from the weeks immediately after the towers came down until the day, some nine months later, when workers removed the last of 2 million pounds of debris and arrived at cleared bedrock. Meyerowitz, a pioneering advocate of color photography with work in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum, was, like other New Yorkers, compelled to visit Ground Zero to help out in any way he could, which in his case was by taking pictures. A police officer rebuffed him in ungentle terms, advising him it was a crime scene. Photographs, she declared, were not allowed.
People are also reading…
Afterward, Meyerowitz’s fury at being denied gave way to ‘‘elation’’ as he resolved to gain access to the site. ‘‘No photographs meant no visual record of one of the most profound things ever to happen here,’’ he writes in the meditative notes accompanying the photographs. Refusing to accept ‘‘no’’ for an answer, Meyerowitz called on every contact and friend in city government, until he found an official willing to provide a worker’s badge and a Parks employee escort. It was Sept. 23, 2001; the dust had not yet fully cleared. Meyerowitz began the project of documenting the site, and the effort of rescuers and workers to bring order to a scene of chaos and destruction that even now, viewed in hindsight, beggars belief.
Meyerowitz, a native New Yorker, wisely begins the book with four massive cityscapes, taken from his loft on 19th Street, showing the World Trade Center in its pre-9-11 glory, at morning, evening, afternoon and night. He follows this with scenes, some familiar, others less so, of the still-smoldering ruins. One early picture offers a perfect symbol of shared American grief: Meyerowitz’s image of the American Express Building, one corner pierced by a girder from the North Tower.
As the work progresses, so does the book, arranged as it is in chronological order. Meyerowitz documents the labors of the dedicated firemen, police officers and construction crew, many of whom he came to know.
Aftermath is a large-format volume, even for an oversized photography book, its monumental proportions apt not only for the quality of the images but also for the near-sacred character of their subject. Some of them have traveled to museums around the country in recent years as part of an exhibition called ‘‘After September 11: Images of Ground Zero.’’ Meyerowitz worked under the auspices of the Museum of the City of New York, where the archive is to be housed.
With this book, Meyerowitz has given the nation a somber tribute to what was lost in the madness of 9-11, a photographic monument fit to salve those yet grieving, and a clear-sighted basis to hope — if in fear and trembling — for the brave new world that cries out to be constructed in the wake of America’s greatest tragedy.
