C100
Article
Joel Meyerowitz:
The Iron Workers; image held here
Lisburn:
Joel Meyerowitz at the Island Arts Centre
The
ultimate television moment. We gazed in stupor at what was
unravelling in front of our eyes. This was an event of extra-large
proportion, 'American-style'. People with cameras thrust in
their faces, covered in ashes, stammered to respond. Life
will never be the same again. Contrite mortals resolved to
be better human beings. My son, fresh in from school, gazed
at the television. "Just like a computer game," he said. Over
and over they showed us, and millions of other viewers, the
same images. Images punctured by repetitive sound bites. We
watched and tried to comprehend .The following day I threw
the television in the back of the car and dumped it. On the
way home I ordered the Guardian newspaper and for the
next weeks we contemplated the images and read the carefully
crafted articles.
I discovered
the Meyerowitz photographs through a friend in Channel Four,
who filmed him photographing at Ground Zero. This exhibition
is backed by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs,
U.S. Department of State, and is now touring the world.
I contacted
the consul here in Belfast to find out where it was and discovered
it had just opened in the new Island Arts Centre in Lisburn!!!
Immediately
in the entrance of the Island Centre, I spotted the American
flag planted at the beginning of the exhibit. The red-and-white
cloth remains in vision as the first image is viewed.
The
Flag, Midnight. A huge, ghostly stars and stripes drapes
a wrecked neighbouring building, with windows punched out
like the pockets on bubble wrap. Beneath the cloak the lights
are still on. Very quickly we are thrown into a macho war
of severe subtleties. Perception is everything, with confidence
and self-belief the life raft, on a dark ocean of confusion.
In Men
of the Arson and Explosives Squad I noticed the gaffer-taped
boot tops, big capable men with balletic ankles. In Ironworkers,
the huge mitten-clad hands lumber about picking up the pieces
of disaster, kind and strong, straight out of Norman Rockwell.
Not a solid piece of earth beneath them in the entire image.
This
is not like the bombsites of my Belfast memory; somewhere
on the horizon are always Frank Sinatra, Gerschwin and Woody
Allen, the cultural references of New York as the ultimate
big city, groovy, wealthy, Successville.
The
images in this exhibition describe the fabric of New York;
steel, cables, concrete and re-enforcement like muscle and
sinew ripped apart. Buildings veiled with net like surgical
stocking, the shine of the red fire engine a well polished
apple, tempting us to believe the good guys have it all under
control.
In Smoke
and Steel two fuscia flags mark the spot on the mashed
debris of a huge structure. Behind, the Woolworth building
emerges through the smoke. A war zone with Hitachi digger,
complete with water font and severed pipe echoing a battle
tank. Rescue teams on the plaza - a huge metallic orb that
looks like art, punctured by debris but surviving like an
abandoned spacecraft, a visitation from extra terrestrials,
another world.
These
images are quite unique. Viewing we decode the politics and
emotions. A giant, once-elegant staircase remains. We know
the narrative and imagine the human rush, a gaping black hole.
There is something here I find difficult and yet I acknowledge
the importance of these images. They are not cool. The story
is important and we look and look again.
Last
week I was in New York. Curious and close by, I took a look
at Ground Zero.
The reality
I witnessed was more absurd because of scale - a huge cavity
like the space left after the extraction of teeth. The neighbouring
skyscraper veiled like a weeping Victorian in black net, barely
covering the injury inflicted by some monster claw. Crowds
of visitors from out of town; a young man tying a sweatshirt
to the railings, his dad an Idaho fireman; an over heard conversation
of a 'Ground Zero Recovery Team' member talking about his
feelings. Waving around like people with dust in their eyes,
clutching at symbols, Americans attempt to negotiate the visual
fact that the area is decimated.
American
flags are everywhere like a joyless Fourth of July. Two huge
girders have been fashioned into a Christian cross, marking
for Americans the biggest grave in all the world. At night
the massive lights that are shining into the sky, in an effort
to be poetic, are reminiscent of Nuremberg?
Rita
Duffy is an artist based in Belfast.
Joel
Meyerowitz: Photographs from Ground Zero, Island Arts
Centre, April/May 2002
For
the full set of Meyerowitz images, click here
