I was lying in bed very early in the morning watching “Little House on the Prairie.” All of a sudden the show was interrupted to report that an airplane had flown into one of the Twin Towers. I watched in horror as the tower eventually fell. It’s hard to explain what I was feeling when I saw the second tower fall. It was like a dream…a really, really bad one. That whole week felt weird and it started a very spiritually challenging time in my life. It was made all the weirder when I eventually learned that an old friend from high school was on one of the planes, traveling back to CA with her family. I’m sure all of us old enough to remember that day have our “9/11 Stories.”
Today marks the tenth anniversary of that fateful day. So much in the world has changed since then. I have no doubt there will be a lot of blog posts remembering that day. If you happen to select this as one of the ones you read today, I am honored. My offering is a video and a podcast. First, I’m sharing again “Menuez on Manhattan” episode 1, wherein commercial photographer Doug Menuez talks about his love of the city and how the events of 9/11 changed not only the physical landscape, but the people as a whole.
Second, I’ve brought out of mothballs an excerpt from my old podcast, F-Stop Beyond. This podcast was to photographers what my current podcast Crossing the 180 is to filmmakers. Getting up close and personal with some of the world’s best. On September 11, 2008 I interviewed New York photographer Jason Groupp. In this moving interview, Jason talks about being in the city that day, losing a dear friend, and how his work was affected.
An interesting connection between these two is that Jason loaned me his Canon L 85mm 1.2 lens to use during the Menuez shoot back in 2009. Now the two are next door neighbors.
