Exercise 3.3: Late photography.

Late photography.

• It was obvious since the earliest days of photography that it was an ideal medium for reporting news, especially from far of places about which the public knew little.  The long exposures and bulky equipment meant that action shots were out of the question so images from those times were either staged or records of earlier action.  It was in fact the earliest late photography.
• With the arrival of smaller cameras and faster films it became possible to photograph action as it happened and the still image became the standard method of making a visual record of moving events, be they war, celebration or murder.  This situation appertained until the movie camera, and later the video camera, improved sufficiently to be usable in similar situations.  The public’s appetite for movie news became insatiable.  
• Many still pictures were being taken from film or video footage.  The still camera had to find a new role and that role was reflection.  The take pictures, not of the events as they occurred but, of the effects of that action.  How debris of war, the injuries left by violence and the aid, or lack of it, that followed.  To allow the viewer time to reflect on what had occurred rather that watch it occurring and then moving on to the next news item and the weather.
• This use of the still image is a throw back to the earliest days of war photography but here as an alternative to the action shots of the video camera.  A still image allows the viewer to dwell on its detail and take in the true horror of an event rather that watch the event and miss the detail.
• The work done by Joel Meyerowitz at Ground Zero is a case in point.  Anyone with access to a television or computer cold watch the horror of the event unfolding in front of them recording of the first strike to the live footage of the collapses.  Meyerowitz took an unwieldy plate camera to the scene of devastation and recorded the results.  He recorded the destruction, the rescue workers, the demolition crews and the machinery sent in to clear the site.  These images allow one to view the detail of the event and perhaps savour the feelings of the men working there.  The reflective nature of these images allowed them to be used in a television programme instead of video footage.  The suggestion is that the still image makes a better historical record that the moving image.  
• Late photography is not there to record the live event but is an ideal way of showing haw people have reacted to it and their feelings about it.  When looking at Joel Meyerowitz’s late photographs of Ground Zero one has time to contemplate the true horror of that day, to spend time thinking about the 2,996 fatalities and 6.000+ injuries, to wonder about how anyone could contemplate carrying out such an outrage.

In 2001 I was a driving instructor.  At 3.30 pm on 11th. September I went to collect a pupil, Amelia Lewis, from her home address.  Amelia was normally a happy and bubbly girl but on this day she was upset as she had just watched the first footage of the Twin Tower attack.   There was no way we could carry on with the lesson until she had talked it out.  During lesson breaks I listened to radio reports as the disaster developed but my first opportunity to see the event was in the evening when I finished work. 

I watched the first impact in total disbelief and then turned off the TV.  That view acted to verify what seemed too much of a nightmare to be real.   Having seen the first impact I didn’t need nor wish to see any more.   To watch any more seemed like a validation of the hijackers actions.  The following day the morning papers were, predictably, full of pictures of the impact, the collapse, the bodies of the jumpers, the ash cloud and the brave but hugely overwhelmed firefighters and policemen.   

Again I looked these pictures with a feeling of disbelief, still not really understanding how this could have happened.  The most sickening of all the pictures were those of cheering Palestinians and jubilant North Africans celebrating their martyrs deaths.   To dwell on these images again seemed to endorse the actions of those who were celebrating.  

It was only when late photographs started to emerge that I was able look with any detached feeling at the site of Ground Zero.  The true horror of the event was unveiled in the skeleton of the towers and the faces of the workmen.  One didn’t need to see the bodies to know what was buried in the rubble.  One didn’t need to be there to imagine the smell of decay or the sound collapse.  By looking at these late images I was able to see a more complete picture and view the scene with a feeling of reflection and detachment.