In the months after the attack on the World Trade Center, Ground Zero was off limits to all professional photographers–except one, the veteran Joel Meyerowitz, who was 63 at the time. Actually, it was off limits to him, too, and he was often kicked out as he shot. But through a mix of connections, chutzpah and, where necessary, manipulations and white lies, Meyerowitz got access most days for nine months, and managed to record the clean-up for posterity. “It’s such a part of my life that I can’t believe it has been 10 years....It has hardly ever been out of my mind,” Meyerowitz said, over an iffy Skype line from Italy. “The very act of the civil disobedience”–taking pictures where he wasn’t supposed to, because he thought they needed to be taken–“led to much more civic-minded work from me.”
Meyerowitz has published a book about the clean-up called Aftermath (its second edition was released this summer, for the 10th anniversary of the attacks), has toured an exhibition of his Ground Zero shots and contributed something like 8,000 of them, many shot on an archaic wooden camera, to an archive at the Museum of the City of New York. Right now, the Miami Art Museum is presenting a show of 24 of the images, contact-printed direct from the large-format negatives. The eight in this slide show have never been published before, so we asked Meyerowitz to comment on each one.
– Blake Gopnik
“I had a studio in Chelsea on 19th Street for 15 or more years. And during that time, I made a whole series of views looking south. On 9/11, I was in my studio in Provincetown, living with large-scale prints of those views for an upcoming New York show. I was surrounded by these images, and they made me feel even more strongly about the World Trade Center. There I was on Cape Cod looking out at the water, but I was surrounded by Lower Manhattan.”
“In the early days of the clean-up there were enormous water cannons on the site, because it was still burning into January. Steam was being made by the water and the heat, and they brought in loads of movie lights that they borrowed from movie companies in New York, so no one would get hurt in the darkness. It’s around dusk in September or October. I remember every photo I’ve taken, and looking at [this one], it’s as though the veil of time is taken away.”
Copyright Joel Meyerowitz, Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery
“This happens to be on the first day I was on Ground Zero–it was Sept. 23. This was taken standing near the Winter Garden–there had been a bridge from the Winter Garden to the World Trade Center, and behind the workers in this shot is that collapsed bridge. Having my first glimpse of the enormity of destruction, everything was of interest to me. Every day was a race against the clock, to capture as much of the damage as I could before they took it all away.”
Copyright Joel Meyerowitz, Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery
“This is looking northeast at the Woolworth Building, which today you can no longer see from within the site; it’s completely hidden by new towers. There were any number of flags on the site, and to see one at dusk, amid ruins, was very touching.”
Copyright Joel Meyerowitz, Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery
“Very often, the term for the surviving facade of the World Trade Center was ‘the Veil.’ You see in the foreground a guy called a 'burner.' He’s taking apart a piece of that Veil that’s been cut off, and thrown onto the ground to be disassembled. There’s a wire hanging down to the Veil, and there were guys, ironworkers, hanging down in baskets and they were giving the Veil a haircut–that’s what they called it.”
Copyright Joel Meyerowitz, Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery
“This is a crew of mechanics who would keep these large construction machines in working order. The star of the crew is the guy in front, whose name is Eddie. He was a mafia hit man who’d just got out of Sing Sing, and he managed to get a job on the site.”
Copyright Joel Meyerowitz, Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery
“All around the site the firemen and the policemen built little structures to keep themselves warm during the winter. I thought it was important to record it, so people could see them in the future. Since I was fulfilling the role of historian, I had to ask myself what makes a historical archive. Do you just look for art, or do you look for content that will be important for the future?”
Copyright Joel Meyerowitz, Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery
“This image was taken on Sept. 11 or so, 2002. It was in preparation for the ceremonies on that date, and people had been signing this sort of billboard that had been erected before you went into the site. I was touched by the humility of people kneeling and signing their names. It was part of what I call the devotional attitude I saw so often on Ground Zero. When I think back to my memories of Ground Zero, the single most persistent image to me is of people on their knees, seeing if they could find a human remain that could bring relief to a family member.”
Copyright Joel Meyerowitz, Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery
