The Public Face off 9/11: Memory and Portraiture in the Landscape

Abstract

On September 11, 2001, when people began hanging store-bought flags and decorating both private and public property with memorial artwork and displays, handmade flags, and slogans, I knew I was looking at the beginning of a powerful grass-roots response to a national tragedy. But it was then too early in what became a five-year photography project for me to grasp what I came to understand six months later: Americans were talking to each other. They were speaking out loud in public on their cars, houses, and places of business, on their bodies, and anywhere else they could find the space. Two years after the attacks, after I had seen a broad range of artistic expression, I understood that the response was an overwhelmingly visual one and so pervasive that the outpouring of sentiment carried Americans into rare territory—a place where private emotions tied up with terrorism and loss met mass public expression. The result is a new memorial vocabulary surrounding the 9/11 attacks that, in addition to including many phrases and symbols, also includes two new American icons: the World Trade Center towers and the image of three New York City fire fighters raising the American flag in the ruins of the towers.