In his article, “Photography Changes How We Experience History,” David Friend emphasizes the impact that photography had during the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, as well as the impact that 9/11 photography has had in the years following the attacks. Friend comes to the conclusion that the images are significant as a means of historical record, as evidence, and as a visual reference that can help people as they struggle to understand an incomprehensible act of violence.
What I find most interesting about photographic evidence of 9/11, and this is something that Friend also highlights, is the amount of images that people captured of the event as it unfolded. There were cases, such as Wolfgang Staehle’s “2001” project, that captured the event coincidentally, but thousands of other people were compelled to take a picture of what they were seeing as it happened. It seems that it some cases, this instinct to take a snapshot overcame the instinct to flee to safety. Even with an event as inconceivable and chaotic as 9/11, people still felt compelled to get out their camera and take a picture. Perhaps it was people’s inability to comprehend what they were seeing that led them to taking a picture in the first place, so that they could look at it later and try to rationalize what had happened. Perhaps people find comfort in looking at the world through a camera’s lens in a situation of chaos, to reduce the scope of the situation to a more manageable proportion, using the camera as a shield from reality. There is also the psychological comfort that comes from taking a picture in a chaotic, life or death situation; it implies that one will be able to look at the image after the event has ended, that one will live through the chaos.
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