REMEMBRANCE

9/11 ANNIVERSARY EXHIBIT AND EVENT

9/11-9/16, Midway Studios Gallery: Art Under the Stairs, Fort Point, Boston

Some of you may not know but for many years my photography was very associated with 9/11. My brother, the late figurative expressionist painter Konrad B. Abbott, had. passed away in a tragic malpractice situation only a few weeks before. His memorial exhibit had just ended in NYC and I was meeting with an attorney to discuss going after the doctor ... we did and we won ... at his firm’s offices, right across from the Constitution. Not knowing if landmarks were being targeted, we all left and walked across some bridge towards the T. I couldn’t get in touch with my mom, who lived in downtown NYC. My family, the city where I was raised, it was as if it had all gone crazy.

I took the only bus that went through to the city the next morning from Boston. It left us off in the middle of the street because there was a bomb threat at Port Authority. I walked down to the West Village, where I had to show my passport to go below Fourteenth Street. Mom was shook up but okay. My late husband’s cousin, in her first job at Cantor Fitzgerald at the WTC, had perished in the attack. I spent the next few weeks photographing Ground Zero, or Ground Hero as some of us called it. The first responders, the volunteers, the street shrines that appeared everywhere, I immersed myself in every aspect of the city’s response. I gave water out to workers, donated my brother’s clothes to keep them warm, tucked pictures of his paintings in pockets to keep them even warmer. Maybe someone would save someone wearing them!

I realize now I was in some sort of deep grief ritual that taking pictures helped alleviate, If there was a camera lens between me and the abyss, I could stare into it. I put up a website to share at 9-11images.com. It’s still up today ... in the smaller, lower res configuration of its time. I’ve left it sort of frozen like that as a reflection of that moment. It has had millions of viewers over the years which, in turn, led to my inclusion in the 9/11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero, articles and website slide shows in The Boston Globe and the South Shore’s Patriot Ledger. I also wrote and had images featured in a PSA ad for the 9/11 families, was featured in the documentary Witness and did photo shows in South Station’s Great Room for the next five years on the 9/11 anniversary. The US government even contacted me to use some of my photos in their work with trauma victims.

Eventually, I wanted  to move on from the association. But this anniversary felt different. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long, but these images are now history. Working with Midway Gallery’s Art Under the Stairs space, we planned and held a 25th anniversary exhibit and event in Fort Point, Boston that ends this week. There’s a Remembrance Wall with taped-on images  that anyone viewing could add to ... just like those walls were in NYC, a quarter century ago. We had a slide show of images from the site, a 9/11-inspired sculpture, accompanied by a sometimes painful discussion of where we all were when 9/11 happened. And maybe, most important of all, some of the viewers who were children or not even born yet at the time learned something that would  help make it less likely to repeat this history and its aftermath in the future.