10 Years since the day I realized we lived in a public age

 "September" Painting by Garhard Richter 2004                                                        

How many recording devices were within a one mile radius of the World Trade Centre that fearful morning? As shaky cell phone images and videos hit the web and television news. North America had its first images of terror. The buildings had long been icons and now these new images replaced the mental pictures of New York's skyline. Images of men and women walking out of the cloud of smoke, debris, office papers in the wind, became our new understanding of the southern tip of Manhattan. Cameras rose to the challenge of recording the many angles, human and geographic that now represented vulnerability, war and the western privilege.

As I watched the same news feeds as most everyone else I grew hyper aware of the possible experiences of  those who had friends and family working in the towers. And now in this public age of photo and video these new mourners were forces to see the fatal blow delivered thousands of times on every surface where media finds its voice.

Few artists have represented this event in ways that transcended the honesty of the images that tourist camcorders and cell phones were able to portray. The subject of the attacks was well over done, experienced many times over and with such convenience the images were hard to avoid. Time was needed along with reflection and the clarity of hindsight to understand how an artist could make a creative statement without being irreverent or adding to the now visual debris that was bombarding our senses.

Michael Moore in his documentary Fahrenheit 911 http://www.michaelmoore.com/ chose to represent his sentiments of the event in a very notable way. He seemed to bridge the gap between staying sensitive to the mass pain being felt by Americans and the impulse to make a creative statement about the attacks. His use of a black backdrop and the sound recording taken at Ground Zero caused us to treat the event less as a visual drama and more as a human one. (seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J0Ia8mnzic starting at 2:20 in the video) By depriving our senses of the images we had already become too familiar with Moore brings us through a one minute memorial of anything but silence. We as viewers were lead to think about the people that populated the space rather than the structural forces that played out in the collision and the raising of the actual towers. The black screen eventually gives way to moving picture again and we watch a moving collage of the footage of New Yorkers processing what they are seeing. Their body language is now the focus in place of the images of planes flying demonically low. Moore successfully helps us view the event in a new way by picking a less exhausted aspects of the event and offering an infusion of objectivity as we saw familiar subject matter handled respectfully and carefully.

On the other end of the emotional spectrum was the video work by Chinese artist Chen Shaoxiong found here http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjY1NTI4MTEy.html . Shaoxiong took little after the date of the attacks to create a work that speaks to the shared vulnerability of city dwellers all over the world. His video is comical when describing impossible ways buildings will have to defend themselves in the wake of this new war. The piece might be offensive to most Americans but with a brief look into the recent history of the Chinese people the viewer can conclude that Shaoxiong is not a stranger to pain or loss. With the equally iconic images of the "Tank Man" seen here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man , we know well that the Chinese worldview is emotionally equip to handle the subject matter in thoughtful ways. Shaoxiong's video is awkwardly slow and shows the urban landscape in real time. The work consciously distances it's self from the speed and editing styles of the western media's portrayal of the attacks. It is less than sensational and yet the image of the silhouetted plane and a building in the same frame looses no time in calling our minds to the political nature of the statement he makes. 

A more recent offering to the creative statements comes from an artist who has built a philosophical frame work around the political nature of the image in photography. Though a painter by trade Garhard Richter states that when painting images from photographs he is indeed making another photograph. He decisively varies his subject matter enough that at no point is he pigeon holed into being a political artist nor one who is an abstract/landscape/portrait/still life painter. In my estimation this makes his artistic sensibilities the very best to handle the images of September 11th with the respect they deserve while remanning distant enough to make a clear statement that both fits within his body of work and tells the world that the attacks were important enough to be pictorially acknowledged. His painting entitled "September" was made 4 years after the attacks and carries with it a visual Head-nod to the chaos that was felt that day as it stays photographically clear enough to help us recall the details of the images that stood for the fears we woke up to in 2001. Richter's ability to reproduce colours in his pallet is that of a master and the sky in the image delivers what he states as his aim when painting; that of creating photographs.


Richter is no stranger to political images, nor is he above painting bland still live objects in his pursuit of producing works of visual culture from pieces visual culture. His painting is a successful handling of the  attacks because he is one of the few artists who's body of work demands he take up the subject. 


That demand was felt by many artists including my self, as soon as we turned on their televisions that morning.  But perhaps the person who held the greatest burden to pick up this work of representing the attacks was Photographer James Nachtwey. Nachtwey seen here, is known world wide for his photo journalism of conflict zones, and weather it is famine or war, Nachtwey is known for his cool distance and respectful attention to the darkest experiences people have suffered. What is even more appropriate is that James was only blocks away from Ground Zero when terror struck. His camera joined the thousands of lenses that turned and focused on the buildings as they came down. His images from 911 are much less grainy, possibly due in part to his ability to stay calm in situations where degrees of danger where terribly uncertain. While staying both human and politically unbiased the photographs he shot that day stand out as professional while his attendance to the historical moment, tragically coincidental. 


I did not loose friends in the attacks, but we all noted the change that they brought. Artists felt compelled to comment, witnesses recorded the events with fear and courage. Now we have the emotional distance that time provides to allow us to look back though the debris of photographic fodder and see how the experience has been discussed in both writing and image. I hope these thoughts have conveyed my own sense of responsibility and respect for the people closest to this tragedy 


Written by
Adrian Huysman Artist, Educator