Landscape with Twisted Metal
http://www.911exhibit.state.gov/
In honor of the anniversary of 9/11 I post this Joel Meyerowitz photograph, taken as part of a commission to document the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks. Meyerowitz is best known for his careful use of color in landscape images. He’s a sky and sea guy. But this work took him out of his elements and gave the man-made destruction a needed beauty and order. Here the twisted arc of metal in the foreground echoes the delicate curves of the Winter Garden’s arched roof in the background. It’s a rainbow shape, marking the covenant that after flood will come salvation. I walked past the Winter Garden today and you see no traces of this aftermath now. Yesterday’s rains washed the sky clean. The smoke has cleared.
The mess in the lower front is a sort of metaphor for incomprehensibility. What’s going on? What does it mean? Random wires and steel beams and rubble all mushed together. How does such chaos occur? Implied is a sort of natural disaster, outside of human comprehension and agency… It is still shocking to realize that man wreaked this havoc. But it is reassuring to know that a man also commemorated it with this image.
Related posts: