Yesterday I went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. On display, among other exhibits, was “New York September 11 by Magnum Photographers.” This exhibit or a variation thereof is currently on display at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., and will soon be traveling to other US cities. There is also a book that has been published.
I have to admit that I was hardly moved by the images, as powerful as the photos admittedly are and as much as they brought back that day in my memory. I reflected on why it was that I was so unmoved by the exhibit, and it didn’t take long for me to find the answer. It has to do with the fact that I was never allowed or given any space within which to process the tragic event in the days — no, hours — after it occurred.
As I looked at the photos, what came back to my mind of that day more clearly than anything else was remembering Sen. John McCain, on some news program I forget which though it hardly matters as they were all the same, being interviewed by telephone and hearing him say “I consider this an act of war.” It must have been 2 – 3 hours after the second WTC tower was hit, and it was the first mention of “war” I heard that day though hardly the last, nor as it turns out, was this utterance to remain in the realm of the rhetorical.
The next day or so — or was it the same day, it is all blurred now — came the CNN and co. miniseries-style titles for their news programs: “America at War,” “America’s New War,” ad infinitum and nauseum, beating the warpath drums in lockstep rhythm to the Bush, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft war dance. Soon thereafter flags on anchor lapels echoed (or helped usher in?) Americans putting flags on their cars (ironically appropriate) and just about anywhere else.
In short, what I reflected on as I looked at Steve McCurry’s photo of the WTC towers on fire, or David Alan Harvey’s photo of the New York Fire Department chaplain Michael Judge in a casket, or of Thomas Hoepker’s photo of a candlelight vigil, was that my grief, my period of mourning, was hijacked by politicians and warmongers and a pathetically unfree press all too eager to stoke revenge from the burning embers of “Ground Zero”.
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One thing that bothered me about the photos was the unmistakably clear liberal bias of the exhibit. While there were the requisite photos of American flags or “I Love NY” imagery, there was also the inclusion of not one but four photos showing various demonstrations for the “war is not the answer” (to quote a placard in one of the photos) position, including not surprisingly a couple by Susan Meiselas. While that has more of less been my position since 9/11, I think it’s safe to say that certainly in the days after 9/11, it was a decidedly minority position, and definitely not a position that one would encounter in mainstream media. Of course demonstrations of this sort existed, and they were documented. However, the inclusion of four images documenting antiwar protests (out of a total of 35 in the “After (9/11)” section) is evidence of the liberal bias of Magnum and undermines the “documentary tradition” they claim to represent.
