To commemorate the six-month anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University is hosting an exhibit entitled “6 months, A memorial.” The exhibit features photography and photo art by artists from the Boston area and New York.
According to PRC curator Leslie Brown, the exhibit is a way of using artwork as a memorial. “Some of the photos are conceptual, some are emotional, critical or documentary,” Brown said.
The PRC requested artwork for the exhibit in December. They received hundreds of responses from Massachusetts and New York and narrowed the results to artwork that Brown said demonstrated a nice juxtaposition of voices.
“We don’t have the space to show everyone,” Brown said. “We decided on what [photographs] worked together as a whole, not necessarily what was good.”
Steve Aishman, one of the artists featured in the exhibit, depicted the close role that Boston played in the terrorist attacks. One photograph shows the door of his neighbor’s Cambridge home with a NY Times delivered on its front steps. In the artist’s statement he describes his neighbor, who perished on American Airlines Flight 11, as someone he never knew but would now always remember.
Aishman juxtaposed the photograph of his deceased neighbor’s door with photographs of the Boston Cab Co., where hijacker Raed Hijazi formerly worked, and the Charlestown condominiums owned by Mohammed bin Laden, Osama bin Laden’s brother.
Photographer Liz Linder focused on the sense of patriotism and unity that spread across America, photographing neon billboards and road signs that read “God Bless America.”
Susan E. Evans presented 12 black and white frames that did not hold photographs, but instead each frame held the words of a story describing the traumatic event. One frame read: “Demolishing scaffolding against the sky.” Another read: “Weeping woman holding photo of her husband.”
One photographer, Erica Uhlenbeck, captured a sign that criticized the taking of photographs of Sept. 11 memorials. The sign in the photograph read: “All of you taking photos — I wonder if you really see what’s here or if you’re so concerned with getting that perfect shot that you’ve forgotten this is a tragedy site, not a tourist attraction … I kept wondering what makes us think we can capture pain, the loss, the pride of the confusion — this complexity — onto a 4 x 5 glossy.”
Brown called it a key piece of the show.
“There is no way that people can capture [Sept. 11],” said Brown. “But it would be wrong to ignore that artists are responsible to do this. We cannot capture this, but we can try.”
Purdue University students Emily Freeman and John Leingruber said for them, the exhibit does capture Sept. 11.
“Being in the Midwest, we are separated from the East Coast,” Freeman said. “The exhibit shows how people reacted and how they came together. It’s very nicely done … We’re not forgetting what happened.”
“In Indiana we were removed [from the event],” Leingruber said. “All I saw was the news; being here makes a big difference.”
The exhibit will be shown until April 28 at the Photographic Resource Center. Admission is free to the public.
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