Serene Passage: A Traveller’s Prayer at Ground Zero
Ruins of Windsor Plantation, Eudora Welty,1942
“Eventually, of course, our knowledge depends upon the living relationship between what we see going on and ourselves. If exposure is essential, still more so is reflection. Insight doesn’t happen often on the click of the moment, like a lucky snapshot, but comes in its own time and more slowly and from nowhere but within.”
- Eudora Welty, photographer, Pulitzer Prize novelist, short story writer.
Twenty-one years ago, I encountered chaos. All I knew, upon witnessing Ground Zero, was that I wanted to saturate myself with an astonishing subject and record the light and the moment. As I rushed to expose an unfathomable decimation from high above, my camera took me by the hand - all the while scaffolding my need to maintain inner tranquility.
Self-Portrait, Ground Zero, Tribeca, NYC, February 23, 2009
BACKSTORY
I first encountered Ground Zero at sunrise on a clear, winter morning in 2009. As I stood at the precipice of my hotel’s floor to ceiling window - positioned forty-five stories above ground level - I had the unnerving sensation of hovering in flight. My glass portal revealed, in the distance below, an expansive abyss in deep shadow and nascent light. Instinctively I began to make pictures and continued to photograph in the early hours of the next three days. I needed to fathom the chaos of form, texture, movement and emotion within Ground Zero’s sacred remnants and construction strata.
Ground Zero, NYC, February 21, 2009
Ground Zero, NYC, February 21, 2009
Ground Zero, NYC, February 21, 2009
Ground Zero, NYC, February 21, 2009
With each frame and click of the shutter, I heard my heart quietly whispering passages from the Hebrew Traveller’s Prayer:
“Lead us in peace... Grant us serene passage, until we arrive at our destination... Rescue us from the hand of every foe and ambush along the way and from all afflictions that visit and trouble the world... Send blessings on the work of our hands... and grant us dignity, empathy, and compassion in your eyes and in the eyes of all those who see us”.
Ground Zero, NYC, February 22, 2009
Ground Zero, NYC, February 23, 2009
Ground Zero, NYC, February 21, 2009
Only in time, while preparing for an exhibition three years later (opening 9/11/2011) did I begin to wholeheartedly internalize this experience and gain insight into how these pictures encompassed everything I was ‘seeing within’: profound sorrow and compassion for those who were vulnerable and unprotected on a bright morning in September 2001, radical amazement for my own wellbeing - in this place and at this time, and reverence for the magnificent courage of a city to endure, re-imagine, revitalize.
Hudson Parkway, Southbound to Ground Zero, July 2021
Still, these days, I often find myself spontaneously whispering The Traveller’s Prayer; its words and evolving meanings keep me soulfully balanced and keen to see and gather compelling pictures along the way. I am also scaffolded by a treasure trove of ‘Lensers’ ( My Voice My Lens participants), whose bold self-portraits and captivating stories faithfully guide me homeward - to the essential arts of resilience, introspection, and creative moxie.
LIVING THE QUESTIONS
As I revisit my Ground Zero story and make my way gathering light and time and visual stories, the artist in me continues to wonder about the nature of good and evil, hope, fate, memory, prayer... and if an image maker can truly reconcile poignant beauty with profound sorrow amidst chaos – truthfully, eloquently... and... is my Ground Zero visual journal in essence a self-portrait; if yes: what am I saying about this step in my own evolution?
I dedicate Serene Passage to all memories from above and within Ground Zero - past, present and those yet to come, and to all victims of violence whose lives have been forever transformed.
Thoughts most welcome.
Looking forward to living the questions together!
j
Hudson Parkway, Southbound to Ground Zero, 2021
Inspirational Teachers I Draw On
* Margaret Bourke-White
Pioneering war photojournalist
* John Szarkowski
Photographer, curator, Director of Photography
Museum of Modern Art, NYC, 1962 - 1991
* My Voice My Lensers
Leaders, Teachers:
The Aphasia Institute & Wave Financial, Toronto,
2013-2021
* Mark Watney as: The Martian
- played by Matt Damon
- in a moving picture directed by Ridley Scott,
2015
No Defeat, Joshua Siegal, Wave Financial, Cohort 10, 2019
In my next blog entry, I am shifting to a series that speaks to the Big Question: “Why/How: ‘leadership’ and ‘self-portrait photography??’.
I’ll begin with an essay that draws on the first of five My Voice My Lens workshops: “Introducing Myself”, where I engage with three essential, springboard questions: “Why the arts?”, “Why the art of photography?”, and “Why the art of self-portrait photography?”.
I’ll also speak to another big question that comes up - like clockwork, at the beginning of each and every Introducing Myself workshop: “How’s a selfie different from a self-portrait??”.
