October 18, 2001-Vol33n7: Jackson photographs street memorials

Jackson photographs street memorials

A photographic exhibition depicting memorials erected on the streets of New York City after the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack will be exhibited through Monday on the wall of the Mainstage theater in the Center for the Arts on the North Campus.

The exhibit's 60 color photographs were taken by Bruce Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture in the Department of English, to document the commemorative candles, photos, flyers, notes, toys and flowers left in Union Square and Sheridan Square, at St. Vincent's Hospital and on the streets of lower Manhattan

Jackson notes that many of the items displayed originally posed questions as to the whereabouts of thousands of individuals lost in the attack. By Sept. 22, when he took the photographs, however, they had become memorials.

"Every place you go in lower Manhattan," Jackson said, "you see 8 1/2-by-11 sheets of paper taped to walls, fences, kiosks and lamp-posts. They're all about people who are missing. Some have as much detail as an old-fashioned wanted poster. Some don't even have a name or a telephone number to call.

"Most of the city's firehouses and parks have shrines," he said, "things people made or left to try to say something that could not be said in words."

—Patricia Donovan