9/11 Redux
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These images were made in part as a reaction to the much-bandied meme, "Never Forget" - which originally entered the lexicon, I am told, in relation to the Holocaust. It was appropriated years later on September 11th, 2001 and has become a mantra and a marketing tool for politicians and merchandisers alike.
As an adopted New Yorker I saw daily the stripping away of the physical memory of that day, but the visual echoes still resonated, spectral-like, monochrome. Whenever I have been back in NYC on September 11th, I walk the same route as I made in 2001 down to the Twin Towers from my Greenwich Village home. Sometimes I walk the route with my photographer friends Oskar Landi and Neville Elder, who both ran downtown that day, sharing our remembrances, pushing each other to recall the details.
I often carry my black and white contacts sheets of images from 2001 as a frame of reference to the locations, rephotographing the same spots, but as each year passes it becomes more and more difficult to see where the past was...