"We cannot see what they see, but in their attitude of stricken astonishment we feel it-the recognition of the unrecognizable that confronted us on that Tuesday morning in September. We see them standing in that ashen pall, like the last survivors of a lost time, and it comes only as an afterthought that they appear not to notice the one other living thing we know was there-the photographer, my friend and colleague Gilles Peress."
"Gilles was the first person after my parents whom I called that morning. He was already on the Brooklyn Bridge, carrying his cameras into lower Manhattan against the tide of tens of thousands fleeing the gashed and burning towers. "We're under attack," he said by way of explanation. Then, right before we lost connection, he said, just as matter-of-factly, "This is fucking insane.""
A photographer moves into lower Manhattan amid the attacks, carrying cameras against a fleeing tide. First responders stand amid pulverized concrete, their faces registering stricken astonishment and recognition of the unrecognizable. The photographer appears unnoticed by them as he documents the scene, joining an immediate intimacy with lives lived in the teeth of history. He had become a photographer after losing faith in language, and his career took him to Northern Ireland, Iran, the Balkans, and Rwanda. His work seeks to make viewers see, offering transparent, intimate images of people confronting violence and historical events.
Read at The New Yorker
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