Homage

HOMAGE …. CITIZEN SURVEILLANCE AFTER PHOTOGRAPHY “ Homage, “ is a photographic project that unites the concepts of citizen surveillance and the meaning of the omnipresent camera in lower Manhattan at the precise spots that the two planes on 9/11 2001 hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center. I, as a photographer have documented the citizens who specifically take their time to stop and photograph 1 Wall Street, or The Freedom Tower. The idea’s of surveillance and the freedom of the individual are in our culture inextricably linked. Documented with my camera are individuals who consciously or unconsciously perform the act of citizen surveillance. I am watching 21st century citizens who use any kind of camera to record and survey the Freedom Tower, as we, at times watch each other and as we are watched by the NYPD. Depicted are idiosyncratic individuals standing mostly against the Federal Building’s south wall facing Ground Zero. Most individuals take a similar picture as in Don De Lillo’s novel White Noise where he describes the idea of “ The Most Photographed Barn in America, “ becoming a simulacrum. United are the ideas of the democracy of citizen surveillance and the idea that we are now “ after photography,” a phrase in the photographic landscape that was coined by Fred Ritchin in his book, After Photography. Underlined is the concept, and the fact, that almost everyone is a photographer now and it would be naïve to view the medium as if billions of images were not available on the web. Something that is striking about these individuals at Ground Zero is the human need to remember and to pay a kind of respect. This is how people pay homage now. They do so by taking photographs.