A tribute to the people of New York

 

September Mourning is a series of 52 photographs that focus on the aftermath of the World Trade Centre tragedy in New York.

 

The series deals not with the attack on the WTC that we have seen replayed a thousand times. Nor does it record the heroic recovery efforts at Ground Zero that so many photographers have documented in detail long after the dust settled. Instead, my photographs record the impact on the city’s people, on the families, friends and neighbours of the victims and the city of New York in the first hours and days after the collapse.

 

People on the island of Manhattan that day experienced something only those who walked its streets could fully appreciate. A city that ordinarily bustled with a million yellow cabs and delivery vans stood silent. No one smiled or laughed. Groups huddled in doorways, heads downcast in muted conversation. At every cross street, pedestrians stole furtive glances southward towards the rising smoke. The smell of smouldering refuse and the whine of distant sirens racing to and from the site were inescapable. Whilst everyone around the globe shared the city’s grief, only those who walked its barricaded streets would fully understand the impact the tragedy had on its citizens.

  

The series begins on Monday evening with two New York City Policemen on a rooftop in Chelsea. The Twin Towers standing in the distance. It concludes a week later on the morning the Financial District was cautiously reopened.

 

There are no photographs of Ground Zero or the human tragedy that took place Downtown.

 

Whilst the press focused their attention on Ground Zero and a scattering of obvious centres, from what I could see, little attention was paid to the outpourings of grief and sympathy on the streets of the city in the hours and days immediately following the disaster. As a foreigner and a friend, I found this a very moving experience. My photographs are as much a tribute to the millions of survivors who live and work in the city as it is a memorial to the fallen.

 

I have chosen to post the series publicly for the first time to help mark the 5th anniversary. I hope enough time has passed. But I doubt there will ever be a ‘right time’. They are my gift to New York and its people.

 

And I have chosen Flickr because to me this portal embodies the ideals of community, sharing and support for each other. Five years ago sites like this did not exist. Today I can exhibit my pictures to millions of people around the world without stepping outside my studio. For me, that in itself is historically significant.

 

In posting these images I seek no commercial benefit, but maintain my copyright over them in order to protect this important record from exploitation by those less considerate.

 

All the photographs were taken using an inexpensive point-&-shoot Olympus Stylus Epic (Mju II), loaded with Kodak’s T400CN black & white film. It is the same camera and film I used for all my personal street photography.

 

Although I am a professional, my field is advertising and I had none of the normal authorizations routinely afforded accredited press photographers. My only privilege was access to the restricted zones between 14th Street and Houston where I lived and worked, and below Houston to Canal to visit my lab. In essence, nothing more than what was available to the average amateur with a valid reason to enter that end of town. In many ways I think this was an advantage. In particular, the flexibility of my lightweight and nondescript pocket camera helped me to record a side of the tragedy in those important early days that was largely overlooked by the media.

 

Although I initially captured the images in black & white, in the time that followed I elected to Hand Colour (in computer) the photographs and to add my own ‘creative interpretation’ to them. I wanted to separate my images from the thousands of photographs that had already flooded our magazines and newspapers. Even though these photographs don’t comply with the accepted rules for news pictures and would be described as photo-illustration, all the images retain the integrity of the scene and do not distort or alter the reality of the situation in any way. But in so doing they cross the boundary between historical reportage and fine art. As a consequence, this sets them apart from the majority of photographs of the tragedy that have come before them.

 

Please accept them in the spirit in which they are offered. If you or someone you know appear in any of the works, I would be particularly keen to hear your story.

 

For anybody wanting to reproduce any of the images or make personal contact, please email me directly at studio@northsullivan.com. For any other enquiries, please contact my agent, Watson & Spierman Productions (212) 431-4480, email@watsonspierman.com

 

Unexplained fogging on film

To find out more about this side of the story, follow this link to a page on my website.

www.northsullivan.com/nyc/fog_a.html