On September 11, 2001 and the following days, like most other people in New York, I was in the streets. Every day and night, life consisted of being with people, talking with people, and being present together in every moment. At the time, I lived half a block from the Armory on Lexington, where flyers began appearing at first as desperate attempts to find missing family members, and soon evolved into a growing shrine to the dead that papered the entire building. I was completely immersed in life in the city as we all were – helping where we could, supporting the bravest among us who crossed the Houston perimeter, and mostly just being with each other in the street. There were no strangers in New York for a while. Everything felt so clear under the flag of smoke we lived with for one hundred days – the humanity in us was naturally at its most connected. A shared grief, and a shared love.
During this time, I did not take a single photograph, or expose a single frame of film. I had the camera, I had the stock. As a film student, I had practically unlimited access to equipment. By conscious choice, they were left behind every day.
I felt a profound respect for people’s grief and privacy, for the gravity of the situation, and for the true intimacy that existed between people. What’s more, that feeling was shared. I didn’t want to be a predator, I didn’t want to be a watcher, and I didn’t want to take pictures of people’s pain. No one seemed to want to do that. At the time this was a sacred moment in which I was 100% committed to living real life with my fellow humans, and to being sustained by the true contact I had with life. Out of respect for that, I didn’t bring a camera with me, not even once.
I have not thought about it deeply over the years, except to be vaguely aware of it as a possible regret. Because, obviously, awards (which never crossed my mind but are a standard measure of this subject,) are not given out to people who leave their cameras at home out of respect for the reality of life. They give them to the guy who takes a picture of the starving child with the vulture looming. That’s why he flew there, to take that picture. Not to the one who left his camera at home, just to not be tempted, out of respect for the sanctity of the moment. I say this without any condemnation, but it is a fact.
Now I wonder: Did this change a track in my life? Was this a determining decision? When life gave me such an event and I knowingly made the decision to not photograph it in order to fully experience, respect, and honor it – does it mean that I didn’t heed the sacred calling of Photography? Given that at the time people didn’t walk around with cameras in their pockets, and that the sanctity of human moments at street level deserves to be remembered most of all rather than be lost in the deafening noise that ensued – perhaps it was a gesture of ingratitude to what life offered me in that moment. In this way, the click of a shutter or the absence of one, may always be a life-altering decision.
Which might be why the photographer who took the photo of that child ended up taking his own life not long after receiving the coveted Pulitzer. That test comes and the choice one makes alters one’s life forever.
I talked this over, as I always do, with one of my dear friends who spent a good portion of his life being a high flying cameraman around the world. Too modest to be named, he admired and studied Don McCullin, Larry Burroughs, and the like, and went on to film several of the hottest conflicts around the world during his time. He recounted the first time he tried, as a teenage aspiring photographer, to document a dramatic moment. At the time the troubles in Belfast were unfolding, and so he took twelve rolls of Tri-X and two Leica M2s, loaded them in his father’s WW2 satchel bag, and set off for Belfast. “I spent three days walking around Belfast, and didn’t take out my camera once.” Partly, because he couldn’t find the troubles. (Sometimes troubles are hard to find, he tells me – and sometimes, they find you.) He looked and looked, but didn’t find a picture worthy of a Don McCullin to take, so he didn’t.
Years later he realized why, when he returned to Belfast and documented it extensively, while on assignment from a publication. “When you take pictures for yourself, you’re you. When you shoot for an assignment, you have the cloak of the entity that sent you there, and it’s a very different responsibility. It’s much easier to shoot for an assignment, because you don’t question it.” “I was that fat cat on assignment, in the fancy plane with the fancy girls serving the fancy drinks – it was my escape from the horrors of what I’d seen.” “It’s an ethical question – why not sell this fancy camera and help feed those people, or defend those people, etc.. It’s a constant struggle with the ethical questions, every single time – questions about violating people’s privacy, exploitation of agony and pain, and are you just a colonialist peering at poverty. There is no simple answer. As long as you keep asking that question, you are self-policing.” About the difference between shooting for oneself and shooting for an assignment, he continues: “I’d have felt predatory on my own in Belfast. But working for network news and documentaries, pretending to be a journalist,” (it’s important to note that he was an accredited journalist at the time,) “it was the perfect excuse to shoot without asking myself these questions.”
If I could turn back time… Would I make the other choice? And would that choice alter my relationship with New York? Would all of the rich and sacred memories emblazoned on my brain and heart be reduced to the two-dimensional pictures I might have today? Since then, there have been plenty of dramatic moments in my beloved city, though none quite so fateful. I did not have any discomfort shooting the ravages of Hurricane Sandy, or when we were once again Ground Zero during the pandemic. Still, nothing comes close to the raw pain and intimacy of that warm September in 2001, when my love for this city was cemented into my bones.
My friend assures me: “Asking yourself these questions is what makes you qualified to be a photographer of integrity.”
I hope he is right.
What do you think?
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4 Responses
This is very well said. I am not sure if there is a right answer. You’d probably feel it in your heart if you are doing it for the wrong reason.
Thank you Chloe! I hope the heart is always awake enough to tell us what is right and wrong.
Boryana Alexandrova raises some very important questions here… the line between ethical journalism and exploitation can be very thin, and varies dramatically in different situations. For example sometimes the presence of the camera can be cathartic but equally at other times it is provocative. The only person who can make these decisions is the one behind the lens.
Thank you Rodney! It’s a fine line, and often reality moves so quickly and leaves no room for contemplating decisions. In this case, it was a gut feeling that didn’t falter for 100 days.