“These were so intensely peculiar-looking, in retrospect, so monolithically sci-fi blank, unreal, that they now seemed to Milgrim to have been photoshopped into every image he encountered.” -William Gibson, Spook Country-

There has been a lot of remembering this week. As Americans honor the 10th anniversary of  9/11, images, archives and collections have appeared on various site, magazines and publications. I’ve been struck by the variety of the ways the information is remembered and displayed. From the cool presentation of primary sources to the hot portrayal of emotionally charges images, the event is remembered in a full spectrum of emotion.  The internet archive has a vast 9/11 television collection of broadcasts from around the world. New York magazine has created a 9/11 encyclopedia defining everything from air port security to xenophobia. Time Magazine has posted a collection of ground zero images previously unpublished.

As I examine the images I carry with me of the event and the way I want to remember it, I find I am in conflict with the Time Magazine collection. Its images are intense, dramatic and full of pain. In truth,they are just like the images we saw ten years ago, but viewed today they seem like they’ve been plucked from the pages of a comic book. one image foregrounds a cross the exploding tower behind it. Another frames ground zero and fire fighters with the dark silhouette of wreckage. When you are under threat, or have just been punched in the face the scope of understanding limits to the basics, fear and pain. However afterwards the full faculty of the senses return. What I remember most is the weirdness, and the surreality of the last 10 years as the American immune system went into overdrive to counter the threat of terrorism. I do not find that in the Times Magazine collection, instead I looked at Assaf Shaham’s American Dream project.

American Dream extends monuments via a video editing technique so that they take on a “digital size” equal to their conceptual weight. The WTC image is particularly effective. The towers live larger in the collective memory, than their 500 odd meters should allow, Which Shaham’s image quite clearly illustrates. However it is the surreality of the image that makes it effective. The digital “skips” that extend the towers recalls how the majority of us experienced the towers and their collapse, on television. In the towers case the digital skips can be read as the explosions that caused their collapse, but extended their conceptual power, and the weirdness of the post 9/11 landscape