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k80uva's review against another edition
3.0
Definitely an interesting and provocative account of September 11th and its aftermath in images. However, I think Friend spends too much time on recounting the experiences of various photographers without linking that to a larger analysis. He starts to correct this imbalance at the end, but he never really integrates these things, so the book always feels sort of scattered.
skyring's review against another edition
4.0
The Pentagon was attacked on the same day, and a fourth airliner was hijacked and crashed at the same time, but it was the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre which dominated the television and print media. It's what we were looking at on CNN, and the other two planes were just items on the ticker in comparison.
That's because of the images. The photographs, the videos, the webcams. The planes endlessly looping into the towers, the smoke rising, the collapses, the dust clouds, the wreckage, the shocked faces and flowers and flags.
Compelling viewing. I know I watched with horror that night, as an episode of West Wing ended in tragedy and crisis and turned into real life. It was nearly dawn before I got to bed.
Along the way I had my own reality check - I went to the Empire State Building webcam, a favorite site of mine, aimed the thing downtown and there they were, on fire as I watched.
David Friend has told the story of the photographs, the videos, the webcams that awed, angered, horrified and inspired. Watching the World Change
is 434 pages that not only tells the stories, but traces the way news gathering and reporting has evolved. The 9/11 attacks occurred just as digital cameras and cellphones were starting to become ubiquitous. Still pricey, but out there and involved. Nowadays, we watch news unfold on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, but in 2001, they were still to come.
The book contains a colour photograph section, in which many of the images discussed in the text are shown. And striking they are. Everyone knows "The Falling Man", in which a curiously calm man is caught in mid-fall between the two towers. Just a man in his last moments of life, the stark cladding of the doomed buildings a backdrop. Death in the modern age.Many others are included, moving and curious and stark. I think the one that hits me hardest is a candid shot of a group of emergency workers hauling away the body of a chaplain. The dead man peaceful, apparently asleep, the faces of the five big men carrying him studies in grief and determination, the dust and smoke of the disaster everywhere.
The chance shots - the video camera pointed up at precisely the moment of impact. The photograph of a crowd gathered to watch, the cameraman turning his back on the blazing buildings unaware as he snapped the shutter that the first tower had just begun to collapse, the sound still three seconds away, but the sight hitting the onlookers like a hammer. The group of people almost casual picnickers on the banks of the East River while disaster unfolds behind them.
Some photographs became famous, their subjects following on fame's path. I remember the photograph of fireman Mike Kehoe climbing the stairs to fight the fire far above. "Poor bloke," I thought, "he must have died in the collapse, and been aware that he was doomed."
But still he carried his equipment up past the line of evacuees. Happily he survived, and his story joins those of the photographers.
The last image is one that has become an icon. Like the famous flag-raising above Iwo Jima, this one happened by chance, even though the composition is similar. A tilted flagpole, a team of servicefolk raising the flag for morale, the flag's symbols a contrast, here in colour against the dust and wreckage behind.
This is a remarkable book, in itself an examination of a moment in history, a look at how we see news, how we react, how the pictures flashed around the world have human stories. These images, these people, these stories, they are legends of our time.
--Skyring
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