View from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to Manhattan, September 11, 2001

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View from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to Manhattan, September 11, 2001
Thomas Höpker , 2001

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View from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to Manhattan, September 11, 2001 is a color photograph by the German photographer Thomas Höpker . It shows five people sitting on the banks of the East River in the Williamsburg borough of Brooklyn , New York , with billows of smoke rising over Manhattan in the background . They assume the collapsed towers of the World Trade Center , which were the target of two terrorist attacks that day .

Höpker initially decided not to publish the photograph, as the people on it appeared too unaffected by the events. It was presented to the public for the first time in 2005 in the Munich City Museum in an exhibition on Höpker's work. In September 2006, an article in the New York Times sparked controversy over the interpretation of photography in the United States , in which two of the people depicted spoke up and said that they had spoken about the attacks while it was being shot. As a result, art and media scholars also dealt with photography.

Emergence

The twin towers of the World Trade Center after the two planes hit

On the morning of September 11, 2001, flights AA11 and UA175 took off from Logan International Airport in Boston with the destination Los Angeles International Airport . Both planes were hijacked by members of the Islamist terrorist network al-Qaeda and guided into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York at 8:46 a.m. and 9:04 a.m. respectively. The German photographer Thomas Höpker, who lives in New York, was informed of the first attack by phone by a colleague and shortly afterwards left his apartment on the Upper East Side to get to the scene of the accident. Since the subway was no longer running, he tried his car. Because of the heavy traffic and already completed closures, he used a detour via Queens and Brooklyn. On the way he came to an Italian restaurant on the East River near the Williamsburg Bridge , on whose garden terrace the view of Williamsburg and two other photos of the same motif were taken. He took the photos with his Canon EOS analog camera and Fujichrome slide film. By this time both towers of the World Trade Center had collapsed. Then he continued his way towards Manhattan Bridge to get to the site of the accident. As a result of the blockade, he could only get onto the bridge on foot. Here he took more photos.

description

In the foreground of the photo you can see a group of five people sitting on the banks of the East River and bathed in bright sunlight. Two women can be seen in the front left. One is sitting on a chair, the other is crouching on the floor. In the middle is a man sitting on a bench with a red bicycle in front of it. A woman and a man sit on a wooden parapet. The man on the parapet has apparently taken the floor, the others are turning to him attentively. The poses of the five people seem relaxed. Above all, the posture of the woman on the parapet looks casual and gives the impression that she is sunbathing. The group is framed by two dark green conifers or cypresses . In the background on the left the intersecting silhouettes of the Manhattan Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge can be seen. A large cloud of smoke emanates from the southern tip of Manhattan. Together with a series of stakes and planks in the water, it forms a triangle that appears to point towards the source of the smoke. None of the people looks at the cloud of smoke.

Publication and reactions

In the days after the attacks, Höpker met with colleagues from his Magnum Photos agency to view the images of the events and to discuss how to deal with them. They decided to create an illustrated book, and Höpker was appointed editor in charge. The volume appeared in the same year. Höpker contributed three recordings that he had made from the Manhattan Bridge. The view of Williamsburg was missing from the book. In a later interview, Höpker cited the reason for this self-censorship that the photo did not do justice to the drama of the other photographs, looked too pretty and thus twisted the reality of how he and others had felt on that day.

The photograph was shown publicly for the first time in 2005. It was part of an exhibition on the 50 years of Thomas Höpker's work presented in the Munich City Museum between November 25, 2005 and May 28, 2006. The retrospective was shown in 2006 and 2007 at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg and at the C / O Berlin . The view of Williamsburg occupies a special position in the accompanying exhibition catalog . On the one hand it can be seen on the cover, on the other hand it is the first photo in the book. In the extensive German press coverage of the exhibition, too, the photo clearly stood out from the total of around 200 pictures shown. In particular, the apparent carelessness and cold feeling of the five people depicted became the target of media comments. For Freddy Langer from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Höpker, his photo raised the question "how dramatic a photo must be constructed today when some viewers are left unmoved by the gruesome reality". Matthias Reichelt made a similar statement in the taz , for whom the picture “offers an opportunity to reflect on distance and closeness, dullness and empathy for violence and catastrophes in the 21st century”.

In 2006, US media also dealt with the photo. That year it appeared in David Friend's book Watching the World Change , which sheds light on the stories behind the 9/11 images. In it, Höpker expressed the opinion that the people in the photo were not moved by the events. This grabbed Frank Rich in a commentary for the New York Times on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the attacks. In it he accused his compatriots and the US government of not having learned from the attacks. In addition, as is customary in the USA, the agenda went too quickly. In this context he refers to Höpker's photo, which he regards as a foreseen of this development. From his point of view, the people seem to be chatting and enjoying the sun. They are not necessarily heartless ("callous"), but simply American. Shortly thereafter, an article appeared in the online magazine Slate in which David Plotz disagreed with Rich's views on the photo. To him, the people looked as if they were discussing the attacks. At the end of the article, he asked the people pictured to contact the editorial office to express their views. Thereupon Walter Sipser and Chris Schiavo reported, who could prove with current pictures that they are the people sitting on the right on the parapet. The two, who were a couple at the time of the recording, made it clear that they had been shocked by the attacks and had spoken to people they did not know about the event. Höpker could have found out if he had come to them that day and asked for permission for a photo. Höpker later said that he deliberately did not address those involved: “As a photojournalist, I do everything I can not to influence the events that I witness. If you were to start a conversation or ask for permission, you would change any authentic situation in no time. "

analysis

Claude Monet - Jardin à Sainte-Adresse.jpg
The terrace of Sainte-Adresse
Bruegel, Pieter de Oude - De val van icarus - hi res.jpg
Landscape with the fall of Icarus


The art historian Michael Diers assigns Williamsburg's gaze to the genre of conversation pieces , which was particularly popular in 18th-century England as a special form of family and society portraits and was later superseded by photography. The focus was often on a group of people in conversation in a landscape, as is the case with Höpker's photo. In addition, the subject and structure of the photo are similar to standard motifs of Impressionist open-air painting . As an example, Diers cites the painting The Terrace at Sainte-Adresse by the French painter Claude Monet . In the foreground you can see two couples on a sunlit terrace that is separated from the sea by a fence. In the background the plumes of smoke from passing steamships can be seen. In contrast to Monet's painting, which exudes balance and calm through its construction, Höpker's photography exudes a certain unrest due to the slight inclination of the parapet. The resulting irritation is supported by the large column of smoke.

Höpker himself also compared his photography with a work of painting. In an interview that appeared in the book Watching the World Change prior to the debate in the US media, he sees similarities with the painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus , which is attributed to the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder . Like the view from Williamsburg, it shows an idyllic landscape, in the background of which something terrible has happened. The painting shows a landscape with a farmer, a shepherd and an angler and a bay in the background. The three do not pay attention to the fall of the Icarus into the sea, which can be seen at the bottom right, just as the people in the photo on Höpker gave the impression that they were not interested in the disaster in the background.

literature

  • Michael Diers : In front of everyone. Studies on art, image and politics . Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2016, ISBN 978-3-7705-6059-2 , p. 123-139 .
  • Dan Fleming: The Talk of the Town: 9/11, the Lost Image, and the Machiavellian Moment . In: Global Media Journal - Canadian Edition . tape 4 , no. 2 , 2011, p. 63–77 (English, semanticscholar.org [PDF; 90 kB ]).
  • Wim Peeters: 9/11 and the insistence of everyday life. Press photography and contemporary German literature . In: Sandra Poppe, Thorsten Schüller, Sascha Seiler (eds.): 9/11 as a cultural turning point. Representations of September 11, 2001 in cultural discourses, literature and visual media . Transcript, Bielefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-8376-1016-1 , p. 157–165 ( mediarep.org [PDF; 605 kB ]).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b It's Me in That 9/11 Photo. In: Slate. September 13, 2006, accessed December 28, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Michael Diers: Before all eyes. 2016, pp. 129–130, 335 (footnote 22).
  3. ↑ Michael Diers: Before all eyes. 2016, p. 133.
  4. ↑ Michael Diers: Before all eyes. 2016, p. 132.
  5. ↑ a b Thomas Hoepker: I Took That 9/11 Photo. In: Slate. September 14, 2006, accessed December 28, 2019 .
  6. ^ David Friend: Watching the World Change. The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11 . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-374-29933-0 , pp. 142-143 (English). Quoted in: Michael Diers: Before all eyes. 2016, pp. 130-131.
  7. ↑ Michael Diers: Before all eyes. 2016, pp. 123, 334 (footnote 2).
  8. ↑ Freddy Langer: The misfortune of others is the misfortune of all . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 12 , January 14, 2006, p. 33 ( faz.net ).
  9. ^ Matthias Reichelt: The great picture manufacturer . In: The daily newspaper . March 3, 2006, p. 16 ( taz.de ).
  10. ↑ Frank Rich: Whatever Happened to the America of 9/12? In: The New York Times. September 10, 2006, accessed December 28, 2019 .
  11. ↑ David Plotz: Frank Rich Is Wrong About That 9/11 Photograph. In: Slate. September 12, 2006, accessed December 28, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Thomas Denker: Frenzy and Standstill - Thomas Hoepker's 9/11 photo and his story . Tagesspiegel.de of September 9, 2011.
  13. ↑ Michael Diers: Before all eyes. 2016, p. 135.
  14. ↑ Michael Diers: Before all eyes. 2016, pp. 136-137.
  15. ^ David Friend: Watching the World Change. The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11 . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-374-29933-0 , pp. 143 (English). Quoted in: Wim Peeters: 9/11 and the insistence of everyday life. 2009, pp. 209-210.