9/11 - a man and his wife who were in their apartment several blocks from the twin towers, started filming shortly after the first plane hit the towers. The woman had a Sony Hi-8 camera, and many of you have already seen some of her footage in the reportage of the event over the past ten years. The man, who had been asleep when she woke him up, cleared his head and picked up his Pentax 67.
Tonight on a program on the Smithsonian called "9/11 Stories in Fragments" they tell a story of all the events that we know so well that day tying them together with objects that the Smithsonian collected themselves. For the most part, the objects were donated by the people involved, or their family. Included were the Sony video camera, and the Pentax 67. Shown on the program were a series of B&W images taken with the Pentax which were striking, in that they were taken rapidly as the first tower (#2) fell. Every small piece of the building as they flew through the air was sharp as a tack, frozen for inspection later by us. It was only recently that they showed the stills he took that day with his camera. Many more rolls were run through the camera that day, almost all color. This photographer put them away after 9/11, in a closet, not wanting to spend time looking at them, understandably. It is only recently that his prints were asked for and then donated to the Smithsonian. They, along with his Pentax and her Sony, will be part of a permanent collection to be rotated in and out of display. He must have bought another 67, as the program showed him shooting from the roof of their apartment towards the new tower rising (finally) on the site. And just to keep our collective heads from exploding with pride, the collection will also include the bunker gear worn by the charactor "Tommy Gantin" as donated by actor Dennis Leary and the director of the program "Rescue Me", Peter Tolan. I'll see if any of these shots are available online in the meantime. I keep in mind that I may be the last one to know about this, leaving me talking to a bored void! Joseph McAllister [email protected] “If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug a camera.” –Lewis Hine -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
