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The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

Commemorating 9/11 in 2017

For too many of us, the events of September 11, 2001 have been embalmed in political rhetoric so thick, that we have lost sight of what happened that day and what it meant. Our greatest city was attacked. Our capital was attacked. 2996 people died.

In addition to our regular programming I want to commemorate that day by re-posting one of the articles from our tenth anniversary series in 2011.


by Joan Neuberger

Let’s end our week of commentary on September 11, 2001 with some images. Visualizing and re-visualizing shape our memories differently than describing and talking. Poetry, photography, and song open up different dimensions to understanding the past. Images keep the past present in different ways as well.

It’s probably fair to say that everyone alive in 2001 can see pictures from that day. And that looking at them again makes everything we’ve read take on new meanings. My then-second-grader still pictures a drawing he made in school of smoke coming from the two “Thin Towers.” The image that first made me aware, viscerally aware, of the magnitude of the attack is a photograph by Marty Lederhandler of three New Yorkers, absolutely horrified by what they were seeing, but they’re standing in front of St Patrick’s Cathedral, all the way up on 51st St, miles away. Here is The New York Times’ collection of photographs from September 11 and the days that followed. (And here is a collection of Times’ articles.)

Frank Guridy shared with us a poem he reads in his classes every year on September 11. “Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100,” by Martín Espada is dedicated to the restaurant workers at Windows on the World. It is a wonderful elegy both for its affection for the international, early-morning world of a restaurant kitchen and for the music — “the kitchen radio/ dial clicked even before the dial on the oven” — that bridged gaps of language and class; and distance.

And finally, Paul Simon. Watch and listen to this perfect rendition of a perfect song, perfectly attuned to the moment, sent to us by Richard (Kip) Pells. “The Sound of Silence” on 9/11 at Ground Zero.

Reading Magnum: Photo Archive Gets a New Life

by Steven Hoelscher and Andrea Gustavson

When photographer Bruce Davidson boarded a Greyhound bus on May 24, 1961 in Montgomery, Alabama, he joined a group of 27 students, ministers, and activists determined to challenge the South’s segregation laws. In response to two earlier busses carrying anti-segregationist Freedom Riders—the first one firebombed and the second attacked by a mob wielding iron pipes—the federal government stepped in and ordered armed National Guard soldiers to provide protection. It was a moment of high drama in the Civil Rights movement, one that both exposed the bitter racism along the way from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi, and one that sorely tested the activists’ belief in nonviolent action. Davidson’s photographs portray something of that drama as they show a secret meeting before the ride, young men and women waiting to board the bus at the segregated station, groups along the route including white men heckling the Freedom Riders and black residents standing among National Guardsmen.

One picture succinctly captures the complicated emotions and political tensions of the scene: taken from inside the bus looking out, it portrays both the young activists and the armed escort ordered to protect them (above). This photograph, and others like it, circulated widely from the November 12, 1961 issue of The New York Times, to Raymond Arsenault’s 2007 Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, and to the cover of Davidson’s own 2002 book, Time of Change: Civil Rights Photographs, 1961-1965. An icon of the Freedom Riders’ struggle, it is featured on the 2010 American Experience documentary website.

Figure 2_Davidson Freedom Riders verso

Verso from press print by Bruce Davidson, taken “aboard the Freedom Riders’ bus, Montgromery [sic] Alabama, 1961.” Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos

The photographic print that brought the image from Davidson’s photo agency, Magnum Photos, to newspapers, magazines, textbooks, and websites carries its history on its back. If we turn over the print, we find a message board of scribbled notes, agency stamps, archival references, photo credits, hastily written captions, and a stamp identifying the photo as part of the Magnum Photo New York Print Library. So many times has the photograph been sent to various publishers and then returned to Magnum that a staff member wrote in bold, black lettering, the word “RETIRED,” suggesting that this particular print’s utility has come to an end.

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Like the print itself, the collection of photographs to which it belongs is now also retired—at least from its previous occupation of carrying the image it bears to publishing venues. Davidson’s print came out of retirement in the summer of 2010—or, more accurately, it took on a new life—when the Magnum Photo New York Print Library was opened for research at the Harry Ransom Center, a research library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin. The Magnum Photos collection, as it is now known, is comprised of some 1,300 boxes containing more than 200,000 press prints and exhibition photographs by some of the twentieth century’s most famous photographers. Once Magnum began using digital distribution methods for its photographs, the function of press prints as vehicles for conveying the image became obsolete and these photographs became significant solely as objects for both monetary and historic value.

Figure 4_Capa

Death of a Loyalist militiaman. Córdoba front, Spain, 1936, ©Robert Capa/Magnum Photos

Magnum’s visual archive is a vast, living chronicle of the people, places, and events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Images of cultural icons, from James Dean and Marilyn Monroe,to Gandhi and Castro, coexist in the Magnum Photos collection with depictions of international conflicts, political unrest, and cultural life. Included are famous war photos from the Spanish Civil War and D-Day landings to wars in Central America, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as unforgettable scenes of historic events: the rise of democracy in India, the Chinese military suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, the U.S. Civil Rights movement, the Iranian revolution, and the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Figure 3_Arnold

Marilyn Monroe reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. Long Island, New York, 1955, ©Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos

Finally, scenes of everyday life in a wide range of historical contexts—from immigrant communities in New York City to Romani communities in Czechoslovakia, and much more—comprise an extraordinarily valuable visual archive.

Figure 8_Chang

A newly arrived immigrant (Tang Z) eats noodles on a fire escape. New York City, 1998, ©Chien-Chi Chang/Magnum Photos

Figure 7_Hoepker

View from Brooklyn. New York City, September 11, 2001, ©Thomas Hoepker/Magnum Photos

Magnum Photos was formed in 1947, in the wake of the Second World War, by four photographers seeking to retain the rights to their images while working on projects that aligned with their own interests rather than solely responding to commissions from magazines and newspapers. Henri Cartier-Bresson, David “Chim” Seymour, George Rodger, and Robert Capa created a business model that fundamentally changed the practices of photojournalism, allowing the image-maker, rather than the magazine, to retain control over published work. This shift allowed Magnum photographers to emphasize their artistic integrity and fosters independence in terms of subject matter.

Figure 5_Meiselas

Soldiers search bus passengers along the Northern Highway in El Salvador, 1980 by Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos.

The result was a new way of doing assignment photography so that members of the Magnum collective were free to pursue projects that spoke to their personal, political, and artistic concerns. While Magnum’s working model has evolved over time, Capa’s initial idea was that members would place images, often in the form of extended photo-essays, in various publications and across several geographic markets. The publication fees earned would be shared between the photographer and the agency with part of the earnings made available to finance further projects. Although Magnum Photos was formed during and sustained by the postwar heyday of picture magazines such as Life, Look, Picture Post, and Illustrated, the cooperative still exists and recently celebrated its 65th anniversary.

Figure 6_Franklin

A column of T59 tanks makes its way from Tiananmen Square along the Avenue of Eternal Peace. A solitary protester stands determined in the center of the road, blocking the tanks. Beijing, China, June 4, 1989, ©Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

The organization of the Magnum Photos collection at the Harry Ransom Center directly reflects the working practices of the photography collective. A key component of Capa’s plan was the repackaging, recaptioning, and redistributing of images as photo-essays once the images were no longer immediately newsworthy. Practically speaking, this meant that images like Eve Arnold’s iconic photograph of Malcolm X might have been made into multiple prints and filed in several different file folders that eventually were placed into archival boxes including the box designated “Eve Arnold 1961-1964,” another designated “X, Malcolm 1925-1965,” and a third designated “Historical 1960s,” and a fourth designated “Social Protest.”

Figure 10_Arnold Malcolm x

Malcolm X during his visit to enterprises owned by Black Muslims. Chicago, IL, 1962, ©Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos.

Eventually the physical photographs were returned to the Magnum office to be stored in file cabinets and boxes labeled by photographer and by a range of subjects and thematic groupings. This organizational structure has been preserved in the archival collection at the Ransom Center. The 169-page finding aid has sections for individual photographers, public personalities, and geographic regions. It also contains subject groupings such as “World War II” or “Motherhood” or “National parks” and also more idiosyncratic thematic categories such as “Time and Measurement” or “Historical Emotions, 1970s.”

Figure 9_Koudelka

Reconstruction of a homicide. In the foreground: a young gypsy suspected of being guilty. Jarabina, Czechoslovakia, 1963, ©Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos

These subject categories evolved along with the press print library as different librarians, archivists, and interns sought to structure the collection in ways that would make the images accessible and reusable. In this way, the press print library with its organizational structures and its multiple copies of each photograph was an attempt to make the objects—the press prints—function in service of the image content.

Historians are encouraged to visit the Reading and Viewing Room at the Harry Ransom Center, where the Magnum Photos collection is open for scholarly research and teaching and fellowships are available to support that research. To be sure, many of Magnum’s images are available online through its website. But to understand these photographs in their historical context—both how they circulated throughout the world and how the photo agency kept them in the public’s eye—direct engagement with these remarkable primary sources is essential.

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Reading Magnum: A Visual Archive of the Modern World by Steven Hoelscher

This essay is derived from a longer article to be published in Rundbrief Fotografie. We thank the editor for permission to reprint here.

Want to read more about Magnum Photos and photojournalism? Click here.

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Head Photo:  National Guard Soldiers escort Freedom Riders along their ride from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi. Montgomery, Alabama, 1961, ©Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos

All photos: Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center with permission from Magnum Photos for any promotional work associated with Reading Magnum.

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An Ode to a High School History Teacher: Or, What 9/11 Means to Me Today

by Rachel Herrmann

In 2001, I was a junior at the Bronx High School of Science in New York City. On the morning of September 11th, I was sitting in my second period AP US History class, taught by Dr. Melvin Maskin. On days when he was feeling particularly enthusiastic about a lesson, he’d scrawl things like, “The Doc is IN DA HOUSE” on the blackboard. He was always doing things like that: making silly jokes or referencing song lyrics in tests, to get us excited about settling in for a class period of history.

On that day in early September, we were talking about why other countries in the past had entertained economic and political complaints against America. Sometime after the first plane crashed, someone—I don’t remember who—came on the school’s loudspeaker and announced that a plane had just struck the Twin Towers. Dr. Maskin stopped to listen, and once the announcement had ended, he leapt into action.

“Get the radio!” he shouted.

500px-Collection_of_unattributed_photographs_of_the_September_11th_terrorist_attack_on_the_World_Trade_Center2C_NYC_LC-A05-A01_0001u_original_0

Someone dug it out of the closet, and we turned it on and gathered around it to listen to the news while Dr. Maskin added side commentary. He was so riveted by the story unfolding around us that his energy more than anything else alerted us to the fact that the moment was important. There we’d been, talking about why other countries didn’t like America in the eighteenth century, and now here we were, listening to audio reporting that would be a primary source of twenty-first-century history tomorrow. We still didn’t understand why the Twin Towers had been attacked, but we had suddenly become historians seeking out the roots of those questions. For the last ten minutes of that class, history in Dr. Maskin’s classroom was the only constant left in my New York City.

The rest of that day was chaos. No one was sure which class period we were supposed to be going to, and eventually, most of the school ended up in the gym before they allowed us to go home for the day. In-between the random bells that signaled the end of a class, I waited in line to call my mother on a pay phone and make sure that she was okay (cell phone service was completely scrambled). The MTA was a mess, so public transportation options were shot and few of us had ways to get home.

At the time, I had a boyfriend who lived in the Bronx. His parents’ apartment building was not particularly close to the school, but it was closer than Manhattan, where I lived. After the school let us go, a group of us began the long walk to his house, where we watched more of the coverage on TV. Only later would we hear from friends at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan—our main rival—about students being able to see people jumping from the burning buildings, and watching the ash that drifted their way.

I will admit that although I understood the destruction, it didn’t mean very much to me at that time. In 2001 I had no blog, but a September entry from 2002 reveals that the anniversary did not weigh heavily on my mind. I remember feeling warmed by how New Yorkers bonded together, and vaguely worried, in the way of an underage teenager without a vote, about how politicians were using the attacks for their own purposes.

So what has stuck with me from that day has been Dr. Maskin’s behavior in our history class. Even in the face of the attacks, he retained the cool, analytical poise of a historian. On September 11th, I learned how historians have to ask those difficult questions, even when present events are shrouded in uncertainty. He made us aware that we were witnessing history in the making, an event akin to our parents’ watching the moon landing or hearing about JFK’s assassination. It was a horrible, devastating event, but it was history nonetheless, and we had to engage with it. Dr. Maskin hadn’t planned it, but that was one of the best teaching moments that I’ve seen, ever. He was also one of the few adults who responded to a completely unanticipated occurrence in a way that lent structure to the day and the way we experienced it.

I am a historian because of Dr. Maskin. He was one of the first teachers I had who connected history to the present and who demonstrated why it was important that we continue to study the past. That was my junior year. In my senior year of high school, I applied to college as a prospective history major. That is how I remember 9/11: as the moment when I became a historian.

Photo Credit
Library of Congress Collection of unattributed photographs of the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, NYC. Via Wikimedia Commons

September 11, 2001

This week we will use the blog at Not Even Past to talk about the 9/11/01 attacks, their history and their legacy. We begin with an essay by Rachel Herrmann.

Collection_of_unattributed_photographs_of_the_September_11th_terrorist_attack_on_the_World_Trade_Center2C_NYC_LC-A05-A01_0001u_original

Photo Credit:

Library of Congress collection of unattributed photographs of September 11 World Trade Center attacks, NYC

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