Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive
by Joel Meyerowitz
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joel MeyerowitzEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-08-21
ISBN: 0714846554
Number of pages: 350
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Book Reviews of Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive
Book Review: a monumental achievement
Summary: 5 Stars
A few days after 9/11, Joel Meyerowitz --- famed for landscapes of extreme beauty and serenity --- went to the site of the World Trade Center and started taking pictures. He stayed there, day and night, for nine months, until the workers left and only "the pit" remained. During that time, he was the only photographer on site. Just those facts tell you that the 8,500 pictures he took --- whatever he took --- were remarkable.
Two years ago, my wife and I went to a show of this work. Like most other people, we walked through the exhibit in stunned silence, not knowing what to think. The images were completely brutal and oddly beautiful, challenging beyond our immediate ability to respond. Beyond my ability, anyway --- as we left, my wife knew her mind well enough to say she thought we should buy one.
We never fight. We never yell. But I found myself on the sidewalk, screaming at Karen: "Are you out of your mind? How could you stand to see that horror every day? No one can live with that!"
We did not buy the picture. But time has changed me. I can no longer read about the people who died on 9/11. I can't look at the movies. Simply, I'm done with narratives that others create; I need to put 9/11 into my head my own way. And that leads me to photography. Yes, "every picture tells a story" --- but not until I tell it to myself.
So the guy who couldn't bear these photographs on a wall was among the first to buy the massive book --- 15" x 11" pages, some double-spread, some that fold out --- of these pictures. 340 pages of these pictures. Eight-and-a-half pounds of these pictures.
Ah, if only they weighed that little on the heart.
"Aftermath" starts, as it should, with "before" pictures, taken from Meyerowitz's studio. Architecturally, these were not distinguished buildings, but Meyerowitz gives them symbolism and grandeur. Here they are at night, the offices brightly lit against a dark blue sky streaked with the last visible clouds of the day. Here's one in the morning mist, the towers almost ivory against the clouds. And then there's one at dusk, with dark, red-flecked clouds streaming from the buildings, as if....
A few days after 9/11, Meyerowitz talked his way into the "pile" and set up his large-format wooden view camera. He often got thrown out; he'd scurry around to another entrance and slip in again. Some officials were obnoxious, some tolerated him, a few understood that he represented the only chance at an ongoing record and befriended him.
"I was the observer," Meyerowitz writes, "but as I made my tours around the zone, I was also observed...and slowly, as the weeks passed, I could feel myself being woven into the fabric of the site....Part of what I was there to do, I came to feel, was not simply to watch, but also to listen. As a result, I cried with men on the site almost every day. Often, I didn't even know their names."
"I cried with men..." This is a privileged zone; I think back to Whitman nursing the Civil War wounded. You will have your own associations; an event bigger than the mind can comprehend forces you beyond the event, into myth and history.
Two 110-story buildings fall straight down into a mass of steel no more than 200' feet high. And, somewhere in there, the bodies and body parts of thousands of people. At once you grasp the magnitude of the effort --- the need for the biggest crane in America, trucked in on 18 flatbeds. And, at the same time, the delicacy of the recovery operation --- men with rakes, men on their knees, searching for the smallest bones. Herculean strength and surgical finesse, a feat of engineering and spirituality never before witnessed on this planet.
And Meyerowitz got it. His camera got it all. Jagged steel that had to be cut and shaped so that, when it was removed, no one would be ripped open by it. Men with biceps like thighs, and tattoos, and hard hats, men who came there because it was where the trouble was. Heroic men. Men like statues.
Meyerowitz is an artist, and he began to see the artistic references in his pictures. "The smashed vault of the Winter Garden seemed to echo the Baths of Caracalla in Rome." The dust in interior spaces reminded him of Pompeii. Men working under lights at night took him to Rembrandt and "The Night Watch." And, of course, there was the steel twisted in the shape of a Cross.
Meyerowitz does not often photograph people; the places where they are and what they see there suffice for him. But there are portraits here, and they have huge impact. Somehow these men and women have taken Meyerowitz's measure, or maybe they're just too affected to hide themselves --- whatever the reason, they hold nothing back. To see these workers and cops and firemen is to see them whole, in all their nobility and fragility. A worker stands in the glare of lights, telling the photographer that he'd been injured earlier that day and now, five stitches later, was back on the pile. A cop chokes up looking at a photo of a lost friend. A father and his surviving son hunt for the body of a lost son and brother. And the ritual of recovery! The honor guard forms. The flag-draped sled is carried out as work stops and everyone stands at attention. And then, back to work, raking, raking.
The arrangement is chronological, a trip through time. But not quite. There's a shot of a man at dusk, his shift over, on his knees, still looking for bones. "The Gleaners," you think, and centuries disappear.
Actually, quite a lot disappears as you move through "Aftermath." Like whatever distance from 9/11 you've engineered for yourself as the years have passed. And then all your defenses. You will almost surely cry, and cry often. Those tears are a blessing, a purification.
Those tears are also an entitlement. They earn you the right to see the last two pages of the book. On one level, those two pictures are completely banal --- your kid could have taken them. But your kid didn't. Joel Meyerowitz did. He walked into the ruins as an obligation to the people who died there and the people who worked to bring them home, and when it was over, he was changed. And he took some pictures --- very simple, very humble pictures --- that will make you glad he gave that much of himself. They will also make you glad you took some time to look, to remember, to feel.
Summary of Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive
After the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11th 2001, the world-renowned photographer Joel Meyerowitz felt compelled to visit the site. In his own words, he was 'overcome by a deep impulse to help, to save, to soothe, but, being far away, there was nothing I could do. On his return, Meyerowitz soon made his way to the scene where, upon raising his camera, he was reminded by a police officer that this was a crime scene and that no photographs were allowed. Meyerowitz duly left the scene but within a few blocks the officer's reminder had turned into consciousness. To Meyerowitz, 'no photographs meant no history' and he decided at that moment to find a way in and make an archive for the City of New York. Within days, he had established strong links with many of the firefighters, policemen and construction workers contributing to the clean up. With their assistance he became the only photographer to be granted unimpeded access to Ground Zero. Once there, he systematically began to document the wreckage followed by the necessary demolition, excavation and removal of tens of thousands of tonnes of debris that would transform the site from one of total devastation to level ground. Soon after, the Museum of the City of New York officially engaged Meyerowitz to create an archive of the destruction and recovery at Ground Zero. The 9/11 Photographic Archive numbers in excess of 5,000 images and will become part of the permanent collections of the Museum of the City of New York. Meyerowitz takes a meditative stance toward the work and workers at Ground Zero, methodically recording the painful work of rescue, recovery, demolition and excavation. His pictures succinctly convey the magnitude of the destruction and loss and the heroic nature of the response. The images included here are a combination of prints from a large format camera, which allows for the greater detail, and standard 35mm, a format which provided Meyerowitz with the freedom to move easily around the site and capture each moment as it happened. The remarkable pictures in the archive visually relate the catastrophic destruction of the 9/11 attacks and the physical and human dimensions of the recovery effort. The aim of this book is to provide record of the extraordinary extent of the World Trade Center attacks and to documents the recovery efforts. The book will serve as both a poignant elegy to those that lost their lives and as a celebration of the tireless determination of those left behind to reclaim and rebuild the area known as 'Ground Zero'. Twenty eight of the images in from the archive were displayed in New York and then in over fifty cities around the world in a travelling exhibition entitled After September 11: Images from Ground Zero.After September 11th, 2001, the Ground Zero site in New York City was classified as a crime scene and only those directly involved in the recovery efforts were allowed inside. The press was also prohibited from the site, but with the help of the Museum of the City of New York and sympathetic city officials, award-winning photographer Joel Meyerowitz managed to obtain unlimited access. By ingenuity and sheer determination, he was the only photographer granted unimpeded right of entry into Ground Zero.
For 9 months, during the day and night, Meyerowitz photographed "the pile," as the World Trade Center came to be known, and the over 800 people a day that were working in it. Influenced by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange's work for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, he knew that if he didn't make a photographic record of the unprecedented recovery efforts, "there would be no history."
 Sept. 23. Assembled panorama of the site from the World Financial Center, looking east. (All images copyright Joel Meyerowitz from Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive (Phaidon). |
 Sept. 25. The south wall of the South Tower. |  Oct. 11. An FDNY rescue team resting on Liberty Street. |
 Nov. 8. Spotters in the South Tower. |  May 1. Ralph and Paul Geidel waiting for a fresh raking field. |
Marking the 5th anniversary of September 11th, Phaidon Press has published this extraordinary new book AFTERMATH: THE WORLD TRADE CENTER ARCHIVE with photographs and text by Joel Meyerowitz, which will feature, for the first time, the vast collection of Meyerowitz?s previously unpublished photos from Ground Zero along with the engaging account of his experience in his own words. This historic publication is the only existing photographic record of the monumental recovery efforts post-9/11.
From portraits of the people he met to the accidental beauty of the ruins at dusk, AFTERMATH features 400 breathtaking color photographs, many taken with a large format camera. Bronx-born Meyerowitz brings his trademark sensitivity, intelligence and eye for beauty to these poignant images that will hold an important place in American history.
AFTERMATH brings to life the tireless determination of the scores of individuals who assisted in the clean-up process, including construction workers, police officers, firefighters, welders or "burners," engineers, crane operators and volunteers. Presented on a monumental scale, and interspersed with fascinating stories, the book documents the transformation of the site chronologically from piles of devastation to an empty pit six stories below ground. This landmark book offers current and future generations the opportunity to finally travel inside a forbidden city where thousands were brought together by a common cause.
 | "I was taking pictures for everyone who didn't have access to the site," says Meyerowitz in AFTERMATH, "so I decided to work with a large-format wooden view camera. This camera was impossible to hide, but it enabled me to make images of the fullest description, with a sense of deep space. I wanted to communicate what it felt like to be in there as well as what it looked like: to show the pile's incredible intricacy and visceral power.... I could provide a window for everyone else who wanted to be there, too--to help, or to grieve, or simply to try to understand what had happened to our city." |
The World Trade Center Archive, consisting of thousands of Meyerowitz's images, is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of the City of New York where it is available for research, exhibition and publication. For the past few years, a small selection of these photographs was featured in an exhibition, "After September 11: Images from Ground Zero," which traveled to more than 200 cities in 60 countries, reaching over 3.5 million people.
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