Untitled (#3 from the World Trade Center Memorial Series)

2001

Place madeNew York, United States, North America

Detritus from the collapse of the World Trade Center with hand-coated silver print

Image: 5 × 8 in. (12.7 × 20.3 cm)
Framed: 17 in. × 14 1/2 in. × 2 5/8 in. (43.2 × 36.8 × 6.7 cm)

Purchase

2002.45.1

Singed papers and other bits of debris from the attacks on the World Trade Center floated across the East River and into Brooklyn throughout the day and evening of September 11, 2001. Some landed near the Union Street studio of artists Doug and Mike Starn. The brothers, and many who work with them in the studio, witnessed the attacks and destruction of the buildings as they traveled into Brooklyn that morning and watched from the streets near the studio. They felt compelled to gather the papers that landed nearby so that they would not be treated as trash, but as objects that once belonged to people. In a personal statement written just a few days after September 11, 2001, one of the brothers observed that, the "pieces of paper are part of the buildings that were such an embedded symbol of our adopted hometown." The brothers also felt compelled to help in some way, ultimately determining to incorporate the bits of paper into an ongoing body of work utilizing trees, leaves, and photographic materials and processes. According to the artists, "the papers fell from the sky like leaves in the autumn, the leaves are the living heart and soul of trees all summer long... the leaves represent a creative life force and mortality- leaves die and are scattered in the wind, just like the leaves of paper." The mixed media works on paper are sensitive, compelling, and artistically powerful responses to the horrific events of September 11th. Bearing no corporate or individual identification, this collage can speak to the universality of the loss that all New Yorkers felt that day.

DescriptionPhotographic image of leaf printed on business form.

ClassificationsSEPTEMBER 11, 2001 TERRORIST ATTACKS