Images of Destruction

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Book titles cannot be copyrighted, so two new books of photographs of the World Trade Center site just after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have been published under the title, “Aftermath.”

Joel Meyerowitz began his career in the 1960s as a street photographer with the usual small format cameras, but he distinguished himself by his use of color. He became a large format art photographer whose works are marked by a quiet beauty. In “Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive”(Phaidon,350 pages,$75) he is a documentarian obsessively recording the clearance of the wreckage from Ground Zero.

It is a big book — the pages measure 15 inches high by 11 inches wide — with many of its color pictures spread across two pages, and some double folds that open up to be 41 inches across. One of these, “Assembled panorama of the site from the World Financial Center, looking east” (09/23/2001) needs all 41 inches to give a sense of the gigantic pile of rubble the elegant twin towers had become.

Meyerowitz wanted “to provide a window for everyone … who wanted to be there, too — to help, or to grieve, or simply to try to understand what had happened to our city. “He shot the site on an almost daily basis until the work was done in the summer of 2002. His respect for the sturdy men who accomplished this is evident in his portraits of them. “A welder wounded by an explosion of buried ammunition in the Customs Building” (10/24/2001) is a good example.

“Aftermath: Unseen 9/11 Photos by a New York City Cop” (Regan,214 pages,$44.95) is the work of NYPD detective John Botte. He was asked by then-Commissioner Bernard Kerik to document the work at the site and so had privileged access. (He shot while on duty but used his own Leica and photographic supplies, so there is now a lawsuit over who owns the pictures.) His images are in grainy black and white, close up, and personal.

Because he was sometimes assigned to details guarding visiting dignitaries there are glimpses of Mayor Giuliani, Governor Pataki, Senators Schumer and Clinton, and President Bush “literally speechless as he absorbed the magnitude of the devastation.” But mostly there are cops and firemen and treacherous piles of debris.

The Islamist terrorists slammed into the photographic center of the universe. Many great photographers live near Union Square, the heart of the photo district, more live elsewhere in New York, and on September 11, 2001, dozens grabbed their cameras and headed south. “Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 438 pages, $30) by David Friend tells how those photographers got their pictures and how they were disseminated. It includes the shot of a man implausibly falling head downward from the still standing towers, a picture many editors found “too disturbing to run.”


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use