Twin Towers Remembered

I happened to glance at this book at my local bookstore. It just so happens I was there around the 9 month anaversary of the attacks. I looked at the pictures and they brought the towers to life as if I had been in New York which I have never had been before. The most striking thing to view was the pictures side by side of a place where the towers were visible next to that same place after the attacks. The void echoes the void still felt in my heart where the towers and the 2000 people once were. This book and the memories and feelings it evokes serve as a fitting memorial to the victims and the buildings destroyed in the attacks.

Many of the photo remembrances that have come out in the wake of the WTC's destruction have centered on fairly recent images. Vergara's book is one of the few to show the building from its construction to its demise. Having grown up across the Hudson in Jersey City, I was particularly moved by the wealth of photos from the west side of the river. I remember seeing the buildings go up and marking their progress by how high the yellow tarp around each tower was. A beautiful book.

I looked at this book at a base exchange in Hampton, Va, and it gave the viewer a different look at the trade center, and like the other reviewers have said, it's not rubbernecking. I'm a bit puzzled by the size though...why is it so tiny?

This small book gives just the right amount of photographic exposure to the World Trade Center without being exploitative to the victims. Primarily, the pictures in the book represent the Towers as they appeared before their destruction. After the attacks, the author went back to the sites and took more photos. The then and now effect depicting the New York skyline is stunning. To see photos of the WTC in all its heyday, get a copy of this exceptional book.

I flipped through the Magnum Photographers book on the WTC attack, and while the images are undeniably gripping, they also border on the macabre and exploitative (a bit like rubbernecking at a car crash scene). This modest little volume, on the other hand, really shows these buildings as they lived, not as they died: many of the views are from a distance,and remind me how they dominated the skyline. This is how most New Yorkers experienced these buildings---going to the top was usually only for special occasions like a field trip with kids or dinner with out-of-town visitors. Most telling here are the "before and after" shots, where the author shows the same view pre- and post- September 11th. Unlike the other morbid book(s) out there, this one has only one (distant) view of the Towers on fire; the rest of the images are of the daily life of the buildings, long may their memory live. Poignant and powerful, bravo!