Do you ever notice that when a tragedy strikes, there’s always a big outcry and blame against those who don’t appear to be grieving as someone else thinks they should grieve? Having worked 22 years as a criminal defense paralegal and having seen tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of gruesome evidence photos and dealt with thousands of grieving victims and family members, I know what I’m talking about. In the face of the unexpected death of a loved one, or anyone, everyone reacts differently. Someone can be in or out of shock and not seem affected by it. Someone can be in or out of shock and ranting and screaming and crying and wailing. A group can be sitting on a park bench across the river from the smoldering Twin Towers in 9/11’s most controversial photo having a pleasant conversation, appearing oblivious to the horror of the background. Only the most ignorant of critics would presume to know what is going on in anyone’s mind in any given moment guided only by the expressions on their faces and by their actions.
“In the photograph Thomas Hoepker took on 11 September 2001, a group of New Yorkers sit chatting in the sun in a park in Brooklyn. Behind them, across brilliant blue water, in an azure sky, a terrible cloud of smoke and dust rises above lower Manhattan from the place where two towers were struck by hijacked airliners this same morning and have collapsed, killing, by fire, smoke, falling or jumping or crushing and tearing and fragmentation in the buildings’ final fall, nearly 3,000 people.” One NY Times critic saw in this photo an allegory of America’s failure to learn any deep lessons from that tragic day. “The young people in Mr Hoepker’s photo aren’t necessarily callous. They’re just American.”
Callous may have nothing to do with it. What it looks like to me (who isn’t trying to sell a photograph to anyone) is that a group of people gathered at a safe distance to watch what was happening in their city. They happened to find others of like mind around them doing the same. They felt a connection and began to speak to each other. They found new friends and enjoyed a brief respite from the tragedy that was right in their face.
Callous has nothing to do with it. Realizing that ongoing tragedies ARE the stuff life is made of, we get over it and we get on with it. We recognize that while something horrible has just happened to many, many people right in front of us, we remain alive and well, and there are others around us that are alive and well also.
That’s when it becomes relevant to turn our focus to them and be in the moment with them and appreciate this awesome life and these awesome bodies we’ve been given.
And if someone stops by and takes a photo of us having fun when they think we should be making the ugly cry face 24/7, then so be it. They just don’t understand and their life is the lesser because of that.
And what some of the people in the photo thought about the article here and below
This morning, Slate received an e-mail from Walter Sipser, a Brooklyn artist who is the man on the far right of the photo. Sipser wrote:
A snapshot can make mourners attending a funeral look like they’re having a party. Thomas Hoepker took a photograph of my girlfriend and me sitting and talking with strangers against the backdrop of the smoking ruin of the World Trade Center on September 11th. Earlier, she and I had watched the buildings collapse from my rooftop in Brooklyn and had made our way down to the waterfront. The Williamsburg Bridge was filled with hundreds of people, covered in dust, helping one another make their way onto the street. It was clear that people who ordinarily would not have spoken two words to each other were suddenly bound together, which I suppose must be a fairly common occurrence in the aftermath of a catastrophe.
We were in a profound state of shock and disbelief, like everyone else we encountered that day. Thomas Hoepker did not ask permission to photograph us nor did he make any attempt to ascertain our state of mind before concluding five years later that, “It’s possible they lost people and cared, but they were not stirred by it.” Had Hoepker walked fifty feet over to introduce himself he would have discovered a bunch of New Yorkers in the middle of an animated discussion about what had just happened. He instead chose to publish the photograph that allowed him to draw the conclusions he wished to draw, conclusions that also led Frank Rich to write, “The young people in Mr. Hoepker’s photo aren’t necessarily callous. They’re just American.” A more honest conclusion might start by acknowledging just how easily a photograph can be manipulated, especially in the advancement of one’s own biases or in the service of one’s own career.
Addendum: On Wednesday evening, Slate received an e-mail from Chris Schiavo, who is the woman second from the right in the photo. Schiavo writes:
I am one of the “disaffected sunbathing youth” in the photo. I think Walter Sipser and your readers have already voiced most of what should be considered when looking at this photo in conjunction with the New York Times article. I am also a professional photographer and did not touch a camera that day. Why? For many reasons including a now-obvious one: This somewhat cynical expression of an assumed reality printed in the
I am a third-generation native New Yorker, who knows and loves every square inch of this city, as did her ancestors before her. My mother and father are both architects and artists who have contributed much to the landscape of this city and my knowledge of the buildings that are my hometown and my childhood friends. (Ironically, my mother even worked for Minoru Yamasaki, the World Trade Center architect.) The point being, it was genetically impossible for me to be unaffected by this event.