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September 11th exhibition

Like most people, I watched the events of Tuesday Sept 11th unfold on television. The only difference being, my television happened to be a giant screen in Times Sq, New York.

I had been lucky enough to be hired, via the internet and my website, to shoot a wedding in New York on Saturday Sept 16th. Lorraine, my girlfriend, and I decided to make a holiday of it and went for a week. We had been to New York once before, in March of the previous year, and loved it.

We flew in to JFK airport on Monday Sept 10th. The next morning, a beautiful warm sunny morning, we were up early and having breakfast in a sidewalk café near Central Park. A man walking along the street stopped at our table and said, “A plane has crashed into one of the twin towers”. At first, we thought maybe he was mad, but when I went into the café to pay, everyone, from the waitress to the chef, were watching the television. So, we walked, towards, what in a few hours would forever more be known as, Ground Zero.

The streets were full of people, all the office and construction workers were down from the skyscrapers, all walking the other way. There were queues 6 deep at every available telephone. Everyone on their mobiles, trying to get through to relatives, the only problem, one of the main masts for communications was on one of the towers. After about an hour, we found a pay phone to call home, the guy in front, using it was covered in dust.

We walked as far as we could, to Greenwich Village; past the hospitals with queues of people waiting to give blood that, in the end wasn’t needed. Past people just getting on with their days, sunbathing and eating lunch in the parks.

To Thompson Street where I had taken a shot of the twin towers the previous year. I wasn’t sure if it was the same street, because the towers weren’t there to guide me anymore.

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