It’s a picture of a pleasant, breezy early evening in September, in the last years of the twentieth century. Everyone- almost everyone- in the world knows this place in pictures, although it can no longer be seen in reality.
It’s the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, with the World Financial Center in front of them, facing the choppy Hudson River where a small sailboat speeds happily along in the wind.
The satisfying death of Osama bin Laden is still fresh in people’s minds, and pictures of the buildings that he destroyed so many years ago are showing up all over. As the tenth anniversary of that horrific event approaches, you can expect to see even more. This one is mine.
I went out of my way to take it. I had to lug a camera and tripod into an empty field to frame the shot, and wait for what seemed the best moment in the long twilight to take it- just when the lights were coming on, but the sky was still bright enough to light the buildings and the surface of the river.
I wasn’t trying to celebrate the World Trade Center. Like most New Yorkers, I disliked the style of the towers, and was disgusted when they came to dominate the skyline of the city by their sheer size, like big neighborhood bullies.
The point of the picture was to compare the faceless style of these towers with the majestic building that stands between them here: the Woolworth building, the first major skyscraper built in New York, almost a century earlier.
The Woolworth building, and the powerfully styled Empire State and Chrysler buildings, defined the skyline and the spirit of New York for decades. In comparison, these new twin towers seemed sterile and meaningless, not even ugly- just big steel boxes with nothing to say. “Nice boxes”, was the common joke, “when are they gonna take the buildings out of them”?
Now the towers are gone, along with the thousands of people who died in them. Their architectural merit is no longer an issue. And the picture that I took as a critical study of them, has now become something very different.
It’s a monument to a world that no longer exists- a picture of the long breezy twilight of the 20th century, when Americans felt themselves forever safe in prosperity and peace.