Remembering Lower Manhattan’s Day of Horror, Without Pomp or Circumstance

It isn’t memory that is the issue. It is commemoration. Memory, at least right now, is readily summoned. Commemoration is something else altogether. The new exhibition at the New-York Historical Society, for example, is not a commemoration. “Here Is New York: Remembering 9/11,” which opens today, is exclusively about memory, which doesn’t diminish its power. In two galleries 1,500 inkjet-printed photos taken six years ago during those apocalyptic days are mounted with simple stationery clips. They are reminders of hidden pressure points and buried sensations.

Here Is New York: Remembering 9/11 This exhibition of photographs and artifacts opens on Tuesday at the New-York Historical Society.




These images will jump-start the memories of any New Yorker who smelled the white dust, saw the drifting burned scraps of paper, who ran through the streets or watched in shock, who lost loved ones or still bears searing physical or mental scars. You have to turn your head and strain, deliberately, to take in all these images: they are mounted in seven rows on each wall and hung on four cables strung across each gallery. They are not organized by theme, chronology or photographer. Their impact is almost a form of bombardment, a staccato accumulation of sensation, quantity as much as intensity making a mark.

The photos, without credits, titles or dates, from 790 contributors, range from the amateur to the professional, from the clearly posed composition to the frenzied snap of a moment in which hysteria had to be kept at bay. This was probably the most photographed series of days in history. Was there anyone with a camera who did not try to capture some moment, staring in disbelief, anger or sorrow?

So the images now gather into familiar categories: the stark moonscape of melted aluminum, twisted steel and clouds of dust; the coating of white debris on cars and fleeing human figures; the impromptu shrines of flowers, candles and signs; the posters seeking the missing; the testimonials to firefighters and the police; the faces scarred by shock and tears; and later the uniformed memorial salutes. These images, last seen in New York in 2002, were first collected in an almost impromptu exhibition in the days following 9/11 at 116 Prince Street in SoHo, where Michael Shulan, Charles Traub, Gilles Peress and Alice Rose George began to display photos from the event, soliciting contributions from visitors and calling the show “Here Is New York, a Democracy of Photographs.” (Information about that exhibition is archived at http://www.hereisnewyork.org/).

It was attended by tens of thousands before traveling to other countries. At the time prints were sold to raise money for the Children’s Aid Society 9/11 Fund. The creators of the exhibition later donated their originals and other materials to the Historical Society. A book of photos from that show has been published; it is also displayed here.

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