union square 9/11 2001-2011 nyc
Union Square 9/11 2001-2011 NYC
My United redeye from San Francisco arrived in Newark near seven o’clock that morning. I got off, walked into the terminal, got my bags, and jumped in a cab. My plane refueled and became Flight 93, the 4th hijacked aircraft that morning. I was in the city for thirty minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center's North tower. I was twenty-one years old and it was my first visit to Manhattan.
During those first couple of days I experienced an epicenter of another sort in Union Square. People gathered from all over the city and all over the world to mourn and memorialize the lives lost, while also trying to discuss the multitude of issues raised by the collapsing towers.
I stayed with a constant group of people and passersby, into the night, returning day after day, listening and photographing. In 2006 I revisited my negatives, making a series of digital prints of the cement barricades along E. 14th Street and University Place atop of which people set hundreds of candles for loved ones. This Spring I returned to the same corner and photographed a shadowy flood of people moving in all directions where once flickered memorial candles bound by walls and what seemed like never-ending nights.
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