Documentary: GroundZero 09/11/14

09/11/14. On the anniversary of the attacks on the twin towers I returned as I have every year since I started photographing, to Ground Zero.  

8:42 a.m. I'm photographing the new Freedom Tower when I notice a reflection at the base of the tower. It's some adjoining buildings but what I see in the reflection are the shadows of the Twin Towers. It unsettles me and I begin walking... 

All the usual participants are here. The conspiracy theorists, tourists,religious fundamentalists, a large group of Mennonites, the firefighters, NYPD and other first responders. Families of those lost that day as well as survivors. But it doesn't feel like everyone here is united in a shared grief over an unimaginable tragedy so much as it does each group locked tightly into their particular part of the tragedy, their particular pain. It feels very fragmented.  

This year there is a block long mural, from sidewalk to rooftop, painted across the length of the Century 21 building facing the WTC site. It depicts the police, firefighters and first responders lost on 9/11 and ordinary people, painted larger than life, proclaiming that all of us will never forget. Maybe the desire to never forget is universal, but we each remember in our own individual way... 

I stood in front of that mural for the rest of the morning photographing. The Mennonites, police, families, firefighters and tourists, all of them against the backdrop of that mural.