About the Photographer
Mark Roddenberry is a portrait photographer who was living in Lower Manhattan during the 9/11 attacks. His studio was located eight blocks north of the World Trade Center Complex. When the second tower collapsed, Mark was considered to be the closest photographer that survived.
Mark shot several hundred images during and immediately after the attacks. His images have been published in both FEMA’s World Trade Center Building Performance Study and NIST’s (National Institute of Standards and Technologies) Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7.
Artist Statement
“The camera was big, and the people were angry. Very angry. The rage was clearly apparent, not only in their faces but in the way they walked. It was hard to deal with at first, but I could tell they hated me, and I could understand why because I hated myself for what I was doing. I told myself it was not me that was upsetting them, but rather it was the camera. As I walked towards the chaos, in my mind I knew that what I was doing was important.”
“At the time I was shooting with a long lens; shooting like this was the only way to get a super wide shot. I would take the film back and then merge the images and remove the lines. People would see the images before they were done, and often they would suggest that I leave the lines in because they looked artistic. That was ultimately how I chose to show the photographs.”
-Mark Roddenberry
The series of photographs gets its name from a street in lower Manhattan, located approximately one mile north of the World Trade Center. These photographs reflect one of the nation’s greatest catastrophes and our country’s heroic response to the tragedy on September 11, 2001.
Exhibition curated from the IMAS Permanent Collection.
