I know -- we're tired of hearing about 9/11, particularly after seeing the Republicans use it time and time again over the past seven years to manipulate people into supporting their monstrous agenda. But...
...
this is something I find amazing. These are, apparently, the work of a John Labriola, who worked on the 71st floor of WTC1. Like many of us, he apparently carried his digital camera with him at all times, and stopped to take photos whenever he encountered something interesting.
In this account, we first see some normal "street scene" images he took before starting work on September 11th. Then, after the first plane hit, he made a point of taking photo after photo during the evacuation. We see the crowd on the stairwell, the lobby of WTC1, the shopping center through which his group was taken out -- and, of course, the aftermath of the attacks. (One shot shows a firefighter named "Byrne" climbing the stairs -- that firefighter was apparently one of those lost when the building fell.)
Many of these images, particularly on the stairwell, are out of focus or blurry. Any "composition" on most of them is nonexistent. No matter. These are sights no one else ever captured.
I offer this, not as a desire to continue our national obsession with 9/11 as "the day everything changed" (which it most clearly did
not), but as a testimony to the power of photography; how even "grab shots" (which is almost certainly all that Labriola intended to capture when setting out for work that morning) can unwittingly turn into an overwhelming experience, far more so than even the most carefully planned and precisely composed "art" photograph can ever provide. I know many of us carry a camera with us as often as possible. It may be something to think about -- that doing so may, even by accident, make any of us a witness to history.
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