This series was inspired by images and documentation taken during 9/11. I was not physically present to witness this event. So with this found footage I recreated an imagined 9/11 through a digital illustration.
“...papers massed in the air, contracts, resumes blowing by, intact snatches of business.â€
In Don DeLillo's Falling Man he describes a scene of disarray and chaos on the day The World Trade towers disappeared from the New York City skyline on September 11, 2001. His description moved me in such a way that I began to reevaluate my own memories of the 9/11 attacks in present day.
My recollection of the catastrophe was one of objectivity. I recalled papers and debris falling from the sky. Seeing footage of these papers over and over again was unnerving for me because it represented physical evidence of people. I believe that these 8.5†x 11†pieces of paper is what directly connects everyone to the loss without ever physically being affected by the attacks. And it is this objectivity that inspired me to create this series.
Since I was not physically present to witness the tragedy, like many of us, I relied on images and documentation from the news. This footage is what became my visual experience of 9/11. And through that mediated experience I then began to reconstruct my own images based on an “imagined†9/11 - one where ubiquitous objects become fragments of the past, the living, and the once occupied.