By DONNA URSCHEL
Joel Meyerowitz, the only photographer allowed to document the recovery work at the World Trade Center site after September 11, kept an audience spellbound at the Library on Oct. 22 when he showed his photographs and recounted his experience.
![Joel Meyerowitz](images/meyerwitz.jpg)
Joel Meyerowitz
Using a 4-by-5 wooden view camera, Meyerowitz captured the haunting scenes of ruin at all times of day and night. He documented the tireless efforts of devoted workers dismantling the destruction as well as their sorrow, compassion and steadiness in carrying out the job. He also took portraits of construction workers, firemen, police and volunteers. His work on the site, which ended in early May 2002, resulted in a collection of 8,500 photographs.
The Library has acquired 16 of his images, and several were featured in the exhibition in the Jefferson Building, "Witness and Response: September 11 Acquisitions at the Library of Congress," which was on view from Sept. 7 to Nov. 2.
"Joel's archives is such an extraordinary work," said Jeremy Adamson, chief of the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library, during the presentation at the Library. "You see the history of the project, the sociology of it, and the images are framed in such a way that these are not just snapshots. They have the quality of great beauty. It's as if the history of Western art was fused somehow in the man's eye. You can see Rembrandt's 'Night Watch.'"
Adamson, who compared Meyerowitz's work to several other paintings and styles in Western art, concluded, "The photographs are so strikingly beautiful that they raise the tragedy to a level of transcendence."
Considered the best-known color photographer practicing today, Meyerowitz, who lives in New York City, is known for exquisite, light-filled images. Fourteen books contain his photographs. Each year in June, he teaches a workshop in Tuscany on the poetry of light.
After the twin towers fell, Meyerowitz, like many other Americans, felt an urge to do something that would be helpful and useful. He headed down to the site but could only get within five blocks. As he stood in a crowd, he raised his camera to look through the lens, when he felt an aggressive punch in the shoulder. A policewoman told him he was not allowed to take photographs on the street and threatened to take away his camera.
"She woke me up to my social consciousness. As I was walking away, I thought, 'I'm going to go there. I'm going to take those photographs.'"
"I was incensed that the bureaucracy, in its haste to start the recovery process, would not consider making a photographic record. I understood that they didn't trust the press corps because they thought the press would make egregious photos of bodies and body bags. But why limit the historical record?" Meyerowitz said.
His first task was to line up credentials that would get him access to the site. He obtained a letter from the Museum of the City of New York, saying he was working on a photo archives, and a pass from the Commissioner of Parks. With both items, he was able to finagle his way onto the site, but he constantly faced threats from various supervisors who didn't want a camera around and wanted him off the premises.
His status remained precarious for the first few weeks, until he met detectives of the Arson and Explosion Squad of the New York Police Department, who understood and appreciated the need for a photographic record of the recovery process. "They became my angels. They protected me," Meyerowitz said. He kept their phone numbers handy and often had to call them when he was in danger of getting kicked out.
With the support of the detectives, Meyerowitz was able to continue his work and eventually receive credentials from the mayor's office as the official "mayoral photographer."
In the early days of the recovery process, one of the first things Meyerowitz noticed about the site was the lack of stone or concrete. He said, "It had all vaporized in a cloud when the buildings pancaked that way."
Rubble reached eight stories above ground and 70 feet below ground. Meyerowitz said, "What was left was steel, iron, cable, wiring, plumbing—all metal. The visual impact of that is a magnetism that pulls you into the site. You feel your own fleshy vulnerability against all this steel. It made everyone see how no one could survive."
The rubble had to be carefully taken apart, Meyerowitz explained. The beams and pieces were marked and weighed by engineers with calculators to prevent the cranes from taking too much and toppling over. The towers were built in three-story modules and as they came down, the three-story pieces stayed together and were strewn around the landscape.
Meyerowitz found beauty amid the rubble and disaster. It could be seen in one of his photographs that featured red fire trucks parked near the piles of twisted metal, surrounded by nearby buildings wrapped in red nylon sacking on a bright day with a clear blue sky. "I've learned that nature being nature will create beautiful days even when there's tragedy," he said.
A particularly striking photograph that he showed the audience was a night scene of workers digging into the rubble as their torches and lamps glowed. "I saw these guys running over to this pile, and I followed them. I came over the crest and this is what I saw. They had just found five bodies of firemen in a stairwell. We were standing inside the South Tower. One of the rescue workers came crawling out of the pile and said, 'This stairwell is from the North Tower.'
"Everybody immediately pictured this stairwell flying across a hundred yards, with these five firemen in it, tumbling through space. An awe and silence came over the group. Then, a few minutes later, they went back to doing their jobs," he explained.
The first three months Meyerowitz worked every day from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. "I couldn't leave because something big was always happening," he said. In January, he took a two-week break and then returned to work steadily until May 2.
He covered eight miles a day around the site, carrying his 4-by-5 wooden Deardorff view camera and sheets of film. Occasionally he also used an 8-by-10 wooden Deardorff, a 6-by-7 Mamiya and a 35mm Leica. He shot Fuji film, which the company donated, and he wore the required helmet, goggles, gloves, boots and respirator.
Meyerowitz used view cameras for the sharp, detailed, deep-space images they produce that can be blown up into large photographs. "I wanted them big enough so you could stand in front of them and have the impression that you're at the edge of the site, so you could feel the visceral quality of what it was like to be there." Some of the photos measured from 10 to 14 feet wide. One photo was 22 feet wide. He also wants researchers and historians of the future to benefit from the precise detail, "to look deep into the pictures and see what else was going on in the background."
There was another reason the wooden view camera was an asset. "It was a conversation piece," said Meyerowitz. "It's so unusual, the old type of camera with a cloth over your head. It didn't look like contemporary hardware. So that curiosity allowed people to come through the social barrier and ask me some questions. It allowed me to make friends. A friendship is part of the network that keeps you alive."
During his presentation, Meyerowitz often spoke of the spirituality he observed at the site. "Someone would come out of the pile and, maybe he handled remains or had been in there too long, he would just collapse and couldn't get up. A chaplain would appear and other workers would surround them, and an impromptu prayer meeting would be held to comfort the worker. You would see this regularly."
Meyerowitz found the firemen "so amazing in their compassion and devotion." He said the firemen "took it as their ground. They staked out the territory. There were shifts of 500 firemen every day, men in their 60s and 70s, out of retirement." Spontaneous memorials sprung up on the site, often with the help of firemen who were handed photos and mementos of victims from family and friends standing behind barriers. The firemen would carefully and lovingly take the items and arrange them in memorials.
Thanks to Meyerowitz's determination and the Arson and Explosion Squad's guardianship, America will have this archives of photographs to view and study for generations to come.
Donna Urschel is a freelance writer.