WTC
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The 2001 attack on the World Trade Center was witnessed and photographed by more people than any other event in history. Through the act of witness we attempt to understand things. The ultimate irony of the events of September 11, 2001, is that we may never fully grasp them, no matter how much we see of them. The collective witness of thousands of image-makers, photographers from all walks of life, professional to amateur, became an instant memorial in a small Manhattan storefront in a show titled "Here Is New York." A small group of volunteers quickly responded to the need to gather testament to this tragedy through the implementation of technology for a public catharsis. Information was transmitted through the Internet and other networks, telling all who were interested that they could bring their photographs to this site, have them digitally scanned and printed, and then displayed, as a means of laying a stone at the grave. Within days, several thousand images were collected, archived, and circulated, through the wonders of digital data organization and dissemination. People came to reaffirm and contemplate the events in their own time. Easily duplicated digital prints were sold to visitors, and raised money for the families of the victims of this tragedy. Digital technology dispatched thousands of photographs beyond the original site and duplicated them in both physical and virtual form. In essence, the show was composed of digital information, allowing duplication in ways unavailable to traditional photographs, and so the exhibition went up in many sites across the world within a matter of days. Each exhibition site was, in some ways, a physical manifestation of the ideals of the Internet—community, spontaneity, democracy, interactivity, replication—and likely would not have come to pass without the Internet as a model. "Here Is New York" brought technology to bear directly on humanist needs: its importance lay not in the technology, but in its imaginative application. The virtual data of the images enabled the creation of real experience through the realm of the circuit.
