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Pilgrimage: Looking At Ground Zero
In the weeks immediately following September 11, Kevin Bubriski made four pilgrimages to the World Trade Center site from his home in Vermont to witness and record the impact of the tragedy. Like so many who had experienced the events from a distance, Bubriski was driven to visit Ground Zero in an attempt to come to terms with the horrifying scenes reported on television and in the papers. At the barricades surrounding the site, Bubriski found people experiencing not only a remarkable sense of community, but also the deepest kind of personal reflection on loss and mortality.
Businessmen, teenage friends, families, young lovers, and visitors from around the world approached the site slowly, and eventually came to a full stop, planting their feet firmly as if to keep themselves from wavering or falling. Each visitor then began a moment of quiet reflection, staring off at the mountainous ruins of twisted steel and debris amidst an omnipresent swirl of acidic smoke. It was at this time that the reality of the devastation set in.
“[Bubriski’s] photographs are among the most shattering to come out of the event, and the quietest. By keeping his focus on the stunned faces of individuals within a crowd, he has captured a series of private moments within a mass demonstration of surging, national grief. Everyone in the city during those confusing days will recognize the look and remember the feeling all too well.”
—Richard B. Woodward
Businessmen, teenage friends, families, young lovers, and visitors from around the world approached the site slowly, and eventually came to a full stop, planting their feet firmly as if to keep themselves from wavering or falling. Each visitor then began a moment of quiet reflection, staring off at the mountainous ruins of twisted steel and debris amidst an omnipresent swirl of acidic smoke. It was at this time that the reality of the devastation set in.
“[Bubriski’s] photographs are among the most shattering to come out of the event, and the quietest. By keeping his focus on the stunned faces of individuals within a crowd, he has captured a series of private moments within a mass demonstration of surging, national grief. Everyone in the city during those confusing days will recognize the look and remember the feeling all too well.”
—Richard B. Woodward
96 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2002
6 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 4, 2022
Photographer Kevin Bubriski did not have the permit to capture the sight, rather he captured individuals reactions, up close, in the surrounding blocks. The collective sorrow is plain to see in the images captured, the first of which was a family, two parents, two children. So many families ripped apart on that tragic day. The ripples will never disappear. Thus follows his ‘pilgrimage’ to Ground Zero and his vision of the people and what they see. The clean images are haunting, presented in black and white.
By the time of his arrival, the clean up had begun, and instead of showing us the mangled steel and physical remains of two iconic buildings, this book is full of people’s reactions. Quiet reflection, some extremely and shockingly personal.
The photographic distance from the buildings, and the medium lenses used, distorted the gravity of the fire. The towers had, in effect, been shrunk to accommodate the format… a small black crack at the top of a building the size of the World Trade Center actually meant a huge three-floors-high-sixty-foot gash..
He is looking at the people looking…
What I didn’t realise was the magnitude of the Towers presence, they were described as science fiction like in scale, and then even more so on September 11. Words such as ‘superhuman skyline of Gotham’. For those buildings to be gone, to be downed in less than thirty seconds is unfathomable.
The perspective that I realised, in my Australian bubble, is that they were 110 stories high, each level the size of a football field. I was only at a football field the other day. My goodness.
These images taken showed a close glimpse to the quiet nature of this book, to be absorbed in an entirely different way to other books that show the physical destruction. Seeing individuals’ reactions was to me very surreal, and gave me an understanding, even very slight, of what they had in their heart at that given moment in time. Some going about their daily business, and others making their very own pilgrimage.
A lady holding her mittened hand over her mouth, a little girl on her dad's shoulders both with anguished faces, a couple embracing; the woman tucked into her man's chest, head hidden. This makes me feel very sad and burdened, twenty years later, on another continent.
I saw a lady crying, it made me cry. I will continue on with my pursuit of learning about this time in the world, and will visit New York one day.
By the time of his arrival, the clean up had begun, and instead of showing us the mangled steel and physical remains of two iconic buildings, this book is full of people’s reactions. Quiet reflection, some extremely and shockingly personal.
The photographic distance from the buildings, and the medium lenses used, distorted the gravity of the fire. The towers had, in effect, been shrunk to accommodate the format… a small black crack at the top of a building the size of the World Trade Center actually meant a huge three-floors-high-sixty-foot gash..
He is looking at the people looking…
What I didn’t realise was the magnitude of the Towers presence, they were described as science fiction like in scale, and then even more so on September 11. Words such as ‘superhuman skyline of Gotham’. For those buildings to be gone, to be downed in less than thirty seconds is unfathomable.
The perspective that I realised, in my Australian bubble, is that they were 110 stories high, each level the size of a football field. I was only at a football field the other day. My goodness.
These images taken showed a close glimpse to the quiet nature of this book, to be absorbed in an entirely different way to other books that show the physical destruction. Seeing individuals’ reactions was to me very surreal, and gave me an understanding, even very slight, of what they had in their heart at that given moment in time. Some going about their daily business, and others making their very own pilgrimage.
A lady holding her mittened hand over her mouth, a little girl on her dad's shoulders both with anguished faces, a couple embracing; the woman tucked into her man's chest, head hidden. This makes me feel very sad and burdened, twenty years later, on another continent.
I saw a lady crying, it made me cry. I will continue on with my pursuit of learning about this time in the world, and will visit New York one day.
January 13, 2019
A good example of a picture being worth a thousand words
September 12, 2014
I pulled this off my shelf on the 13th Anniversary of September 11th. Instead of being photographs of ground zero, this book contains black and white photographs of people, people who are looking at ground zero. There are no scenes of the destruction itself, and all we see are the looks in the people's faces who are viewing it.
The book says all of these photographs were taken at ground zero starting two weeks after the attacks, through December of that years. So this was just a 3 months period, when it was all fresh. What I see in these photos are people of all ages, races, religions, backgrounds. And the emotions that show on their faces run the gamut of levels of shock, disbelief, despair, and sadness.
A thought provoking photo book, that documents a time in American history.
The book says all of these photographs were taken at ground zero starting two weeks after the attacks, through December of that years. So this was just a 3 months period, when it was all fresh. What I see in these photos are people of all ages, races, religions, backgrounds. And the emotions that show on their faces run the gamut of levels of shock, disbelief, despair, and sadness.
A thought provoking photo book, that documents a time in American history.
November 19, 2020
Simple but effective. Photos are only of various people looking at Ground Zero on 9/11, but the faces spoke to the numbness and disbelief that many Americans felt on that tragic day. Most of the people photographed looked simply stunned and looking back almost 20 years later that was comparable to the feelings that almost everyone outside of New York experienced when we turned on our TV on that horrible day in September.
December 16, 2012
The photographs where great.
May 10, 2015
No description, only images, still they convey so much. Same Emotion on Different Faces, Sorrow is a potent unifier....
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews