06 March 2002

Londoners Welcome U.S. September 11 Photo Exhibition

London -- This ancient capital, which withstood a relentless bombing assault during World War II that leveled much of its historic center but never conquered the spirit of its people, has welcomed an American exhibition of photos commemorating the September 11 terrorist attack on New York City.

Between 200 and 300 artists, journalists, and government officials attended the opening of "After September 11: Images from Ground Zero," an exhibition of 28 photos by New York photographer Joel Meyerowitz. The March 5 evening event was hosted by the Museum of London, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Using a wooden box-view camera, Meyerowitz took 5,000 photos of rescue and recovery efforts after Muslim terrorists slammed two hijacked passenger airliners into the twin World Trade Center towers in Manhattan on September 11, setting both 110-story skyscrapers ablaze and causing their total collapse. It is believed that as many as 80 British citizens were among the 2,800 persons killed in the attack.

The artist said his aim was "to make a photographic record of the aftermath: the awesome spectacle of destruction; the reverence for the dead; the steadfast, painstaking effort of recovery; the life of those whose act of salvation has embedded itself deeply into the consciousness of all of us in America and around the world."

The exhibition, which Secretary of State Colin Powell launched in Washington on February 27, was organized by the Museum of the City of New York and is managed and presented by the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). More than 25 sets of the collection will be shown in some 60 cities during the three years the exhibition is on tour worldwide.

At the British launching, Museum of London Director Simon Thurley told his audience: "Tonight is a very special night for us. We have before us truly remarkable pictures of a horrific story and we are very honored that our sister museum in New York said that we would be the place to first show them in England to the British public."

Thurley added, "We felt it was right for you to see a comparison of the horrors that struck New York City on September 11 with the horrors that Hitler perpetrated upon us in the City of London in the Blitz in the Second World War." And he directed his audience to an exhibition next door of 30 black-and-white photos showing the devastation wrought on the city at the height of the Nazi bombing campaign, which lasted from September 1940 to May 1941. The photographer, former police constable Arthur Cross, and his assistant, Fred Tibbs, used a Kodak half-plate view camera and a second-hand Leica to take their pictures.

U.S. Ambassador William S. Farish touched on the comparison when he told the Pilgrims' Society of Great Britain, just five weeks after the New York attack: "The great Winston Churchill, in his memoirs of the Blitz, spoke of a similar transatlantic outpouring of sympathy and support. Only, then, the flow was going the other way. Churchill wrote: 'Away across the Atlantic, the prolonged bombardment of London ... aroused a wave of sympathy in the United States. ... I could feel the glow of millions of men and women, eager to share the suffering."

Noting that the State Department and the American Embassy in London were "tremendously supportive and helpful in making this whole thing happen," Thurley introduced U.S. Deputy Ambassador Glyn Davies, who welcomed the guests and thanked the Museum of London.

Davies said it was fitting that London was chosen as the first location for the exhibition's launching in Europe because "this nation and this city really poured out its heart in a huge way to New York after September 11." Shortly after the attack, he said, 50,000 people came "over the course of just 10 days" to offer their condolences at a special center set up in Grosvenor Square near the embassy, "which was absolutely the most incredible tribute, I think, on the part of Londoners and Britons to the United States."

The exhibition's photographer, Joel Meyerowitz, who traveled to London to attend the opening, described the five months he worked taking pictures at the site, saying, "I have seen extraordinary things." For example, once a policeman working at the site came to him and said: "You should have been here today. We were on our hands and knees, scraping away [at the rubble], hoping to find some [human] remains," when, amid the smoke, the workers were suddenly surrounded by beautiful Monarch butterflies. "Souls," said one of the workers.

Things like that happened at Ground Zero, which is what the approximately 17-acre destruction site came to be called, Meyerowitz told his audience. "At times the site was transformed by the atmosphere and the weather. For me, it was incredibly moving to first go in there and stand at the bottom of ... one of these 110-story buildings and see that what fell was not stone or concrete -- that all disappeared into dust -- but steel and cable and plumbing and tables and chairs, and I felt a kind of empathy for the people who were trapped inside. Maybe a thousand people fell in that building.

"From that first recognition of their terror and tragedy, I was on the other side" with the workers, he explained, "because to live and work in that site almost continually for six months is to be transformed by both the vision of the place itself and the effort -- the incredible discipline, devotion, and salvation that these men and women, who are still in there, perform every day."

Because working at the site "has brought us all to a more vulnerable place," Meyerowitz said, he believes Ground Zero has become a spiritual place. "The people who attend to it aren't just workers" -- their "devotion" has given them an almost religious quality, he said.

Meyerowitz said he planned to photograph Ground Zero "until it is a quiet place, probably two months from now [when] they think it [the rubble removal] will be finished." But, he says, it continues to exert a hold on him because of the emotional power that is evident in his photos. "There is a surreal comedy sometimes," he said -- for example, when workers recently recovered $11 million in currency from a safe that had fallen into the basement when one tower collapsed -- and "always a sense of tragedy, and sometimes an extraordinary beauty."

In the final analysis, Meyerowitz said, "nature is the great healer. Time and nature itself will rub this wound smooth and it will pass. Life goes on."