I wrote this piece about 9-11 shortly after the event. Today, I feel it's appropriate to remember the feelings I had then.
It is September 11, 2001 and the world has stopped. Four skyjacked commercial airliners have crashed—two into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and the fourth into a wooded area near Pittsburgh.
My family and I are camping among the redwoods of northern California, our last vacation together before returning to the day-to-day realities of graduate studies. For many years, as a photojournalist, covering news was a way of life for me. I can still vividly recall in 1992, photographing the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. And before this, there were nearly ten years of documenting conflicts in Central America and Southern Mexico. Now, somehow, this more recent event eclipses all others—it stings my moral conscience and political consciousness. It is loaded with unimaginable images of grief and despair that overwhelm my emotions.
Even though I am unplugged from the relentless stream of media, I have become accustomed to “there is no escaping the news” of what has happened thousands of miles away. Even though there is no Internet or television here—no America Online or Cable News Network to construct what has happened for me, my mind actively seeks to make sense of things. At first, factual details of the tragedies are minimal, and I listen to the radio for hours as reporters speculate and ramble on ad nauseam about how they arrived on the scene, the color of the sky, or other non-essential information. There seems to be little objectivity in pitch of voice or innuendo that follows. At the same time, it appears that reporters do not intentionally set out to mislead or misinform. Much of the work of newsgathering is mediated by access to facts and information from eyewitnesses and official sources. In the aftermath of the explosions, when thousands of people have perished, reporters scramble to produce coherent accounts as networks interrupt daily programming to bring to the world a continuous “live” feed from the scene. The pressure on journalists to get to the scene, find the right people to talk to, and make sense of events is enormous, and at times, produces more confusion than factual knowledge.
Perhaps it is best not to have the usual barrage of visually mediated messages from video and still photographs telling me the way it is. Instead, I am forced to concentrate and create my own mental images of the destruction. This process is intimate, personal and profoundly different from the plugged-in life I have constructed for myself. Like a monk in a cloister focused on prayer, I try to visualize the scene. I imagine what it must be like to be one of the hundreds of firefighters and other rescue workers trapped inside the collapsing World Trade Center. I try to imagine the carnage of torn flesh, twisted steel, acrid smoke, and shattered glass. I think about and imagine the fear on the faces of the passengers as the plane speeds toward impact. I imagine grieving family members—the shock, loss and emptiness. I imagine the chain of events that led up to such an act—one so desperate and so seemingly horrible that words and images cannot fully comprehend.
The words imagine, image, and imagination interest me a great deal. Even when we are provided an image of a jet crashing into a skyscraper we are still required to complete the scene, imagine, or construct a mental narrative through our imagination of what comes next, in this case death and destruction. The imagination is an active part of cognition and sometimes I think we often take it for granted. As I sit, tuned into the radio, there is little else to do but to listen and imagine. My mind is full of images. As I receive bits and pieces of information, I begin to construct a scenario of the events taking place that makes sense to me—one that is contingent upon my perception of reality. Part of this construction comes in the creation of mental pictures produced through the accounts of others: reporters, eyewitnesses, officials, and experts. At the same time, I rely upon my own working knowledge of New York City and Washington; I am dependent upon a collective social stock of knowledge, and the mind’s eye creates what I know from personal experience.
It is hopeless to imagine what death looks like when you are so far removed from the reality of daily events. Sometimes death appears real only when it becomes relevant to my own existence, and somehow I could place myself on board a skyjacked airliner or in one of the buildings that collapsed after the crash. I am uncomfortable with the idea that this event shocks me more than others I read in the newspaper or see on television. For example, the destruction caused by Hurricane Mitch a few years ago, the embassy bombings in Africa, or even the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, seem somehow less on my scale of what can be categorized as horrific in my mind’s eye. All of these events were horrific, but the symbolism of these attacks and the uncertainty that follows makes it more relevant to everyday life. Again, it is the imagination that creates the most primal desires and fears.
The mental images that come to mind occur with only a minimal amount of media. I have not yet watched television, scanned the World Wide Web, or even opened a newspaper yet to understand what is happening. My only source of information is gleaned from the radio. In many ways, the mental images I create seem more real to me as I am forced to actively contemplate upon what little information I am aware of. But my mental images of the scene are as real as the constructed reality provided by the media, and based upon my social stock of knowledge and personal experience. In a way, without the illusion of this mediation reality provided by news images, I feel somehow more connected to the victims. Without the live video and wire photos, I actively construct, in my mind’s eye, a tableau vivant of the drama. Of course, some will argue the subjectivity of this experience, but it is nevertheless very real. This is the psychological, emotional and intellectual response I create to the shock of the real. The panorama that is constructed in my mind’s eye is a cobble of mental pictures that intersect with the reality of my everyday life.