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Images of terror
The first comprehensive collection of Sept. 11 photographs comes to the Tampa Bay area today courtesy of Northern Trust Bank.
By LENNIE BENNETT
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 8, 2002
BELLEAIR BLUFFS -- Almost a year later, the images of Sept. 11 seem no easier to assimilate.
Northern Trust Bank has collected 150 photographs of that day in New York City; Washington, D.C.; and Shanksville, Pa., and its aftermath, for a national tour that is visiting the Tampa Bay area for several weeks.
The exhibit's first stop is the bank's Belleair Bluffs office, where it is on display today and tomorrow. It moves to the downtown St. Petersburg office from Aug. 13 to 16 and to the Tampa office from Aug. 20 to 23. All venues are free and open to the public.
This is the first comprehensive collection of Sept. 11 documents to come to the area. The photographs were culled from many news sources by NewsCom, and a number of them will be familiar. The digital reproductions are not of the highest quality, but that graininess gives the exhibit the feel of a Ken Burns documentary without the voiceovers. We know this story well enough to provide our own, or we can look to the captions that identify and date each photo.
Regional president Cary Putrino said the bank eliminated explicit photos because the show would be visited by young students. The most wrenching are two that show doomed people leaning from windows above the fires in one of the World Trade Center towers. Some aesthetically beautiful shots stand out. A single sea bird flies against the damaged New York skyline, looking like an airplane. Scorched tree trunks at the site of the fourth plane crash push through smoking earth like the bare metal wreckage standing over the rubble at ground zero. I don't recall seeing them before, but perhaps I wasn't ready to notice them amid the hundreds of horrific photographs. They are secondary images that distance us from the human toll.
So, too, do several aerial photos showing Manhattan, with only a small spot of smoke emanating from ground zero.
New York City firefighter Gerard Rogan, whose brother Matthew died in one of the towers, has accompanied the exhibit and tells his story with the rote numbness of one who has borne witness to too many strangers.
"People say you learn something from every tragedy," he said. "The only thing we learned from this one is that you don't go into a tall building that's been hit by an airplane."
That same sensibility informs the show, its random arrangement of the prints suggesting that it's still too soon to find ultimate meaning there. Our perceptions have been filtered by time, our compassion mitigated by more immediate and personal concerns. Maybe it's enough at this point just to remember.
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REVIEW: "9.11.01: The Day that Changed the World" is at the following Northern Trust Bank branches: 525 Indian Rocks Road, Belleair Bluffs, today and Friday; 100 Second Ave. S, St. Petersburg, Aug. 13-16; 425 N Florida Ave, Tampa, Aug. 20-23. All offices are open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Friday. Free. (727) 895-1719.
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