JEFF GRANIT staff Donald Black, of Monroe, speaks with David Friend during the author’s visit to the Monroe Township Library on Sept. 5 in support of his book, “Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11.” MONROE – David Friend, author of
Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11,” held his audience at the township library spellbound as he presented photos of the day that he says “history came to our shores.”
The pictures were taken by professionals and amateurs, people working at the World Trade Center or living in apartments nearby or across the river. Some images are well known – firemen raising the flag atop a pile of rubble; office workers fleeing in the street, a cloud of dust looming behind them. Others offered a more intimate perspective, evoking fear, hope and sometimes irony.
While each photo tells the tale of a moment, Friend told the tales of their creators.
Friend, who by day is Vanity Fair’s editor of creative development, appeared at the library Sept. 5, speaking not just about photos taken during Sept. 11-17, 2001, but also about the evolution of film in the 1990s, from rolls to digital, and how the use of news satellites have led to a fundamental change in photography and its use by the media. Images are captured and transmitted instantaneously now.
Monroe resident Florence Spencer discusses her visit to ground zero. “Thirty-four years ago, when John Kennedy died, there was one grainy 16- millimeter film that captured the assassination. The public did not see that on television at the time. Instead, that film was published in the form of still photographs in a magazine four days later,” Friend said.
“On 9/11, 2.5 billion people watched the towers fall on TV or on their computers. One third of the human race was watching the same thing at the same time,” he said.
Friend has said that the terrorist attacks were “the most widely observed and photographed breaking news event in human history.”
He also believes the photos from 9/11 and the ensuing days helped the nation mourn, connect, communicate and respond to the horrific events.
PHOTOS BY JEFF GRANIT staff A NASA satellite photo shows smoke billowing from lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001. Friend noted that terrorists themselves are well versed in the use of the media
“Terrorism demands the media. It needs frightened eyes,” he said, noting Osama bin Laden’s use of film. “We never actually see the man. We only see the videos he has made.”
Among those present for Friend’s appearance was Nicki Stern, a writer from the Princeton area who lost her husband on 9/11. Stern, one of the many people Friend interviewed for his book, became executive director of Families of 9/11, a national organization for families affected by the terrorist attacks. On behalf of those families, Stern has campaigned to have the media use more restraint in the images displayed of 9/11. She has concerns about the impact of the images on the human spirit.
“It’s very difficult now because of the Internet. The mainstream networks are competing with a media that has no censorship,” she said. “What does it mean when we can so easily see beheadings, and the antics of Britney Spears on our home computers?”
Stern recently answered that question on her Internet blog at www.1womansvu. com.
“The effect is to distance us from the emotional content,” she said.
She also feels there are no easy answers.
“I don’t see how, in a democracy, you can tell people what to look at, and I don’t want to, as our public officials seem to have trouble these days knowing where to draw the line. Unfortunately, so do the rest of us,” she wrote.
Monroe resident Judith Blach attended the library event.
“I remember Pearl Harbor. I was only a child, but I remember the impact on my neighborhood. All the neighbors were so aghast. This [9/11] was something similar,” she said.
Another woman in the audience recalled the aftermath at ground zero.
“I went down to the site a few days after it happened. You couldn’t get too close, but it was absolutely silent. No horns were beeping. People spoke softly even just walking in the street. There was a feeling of reverence,” she said.
Friend noted that, despite the horror and tragedy of 9/11, many people have told him about positive experiences.
“They talk about the outpouring of compassion, a sense of community and people caring about each other,” he noted.
Friend has also been surprised by the number of conspiracy theorists he has encountered.
“I can usually recognize them. They stand off to the side, nod their heads in all the wrong places, and think I’m part of the conspiracy,” he noted with a smile.
“Watching the World Change,” published this year by Picador, has received excellent reviews and was recently released in paperback.
Friend, who previously served as director of photography for Life magazine, has been in the trenches as well, covering stories in Afghanistan and Lebanon. Friend was also the executive producer of the award-winning CBS documentary 9/11.” He has interviewed former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd and Israel’s Ariel Sharon.
His appearance last week was the first of the library’s Fall Author Series. Gina Blume, director of public relations at the library, said she was very happy with the response of those attending the talk.
“I received a lot of positive feedback about the author and his topic,” Blume said.
She has scheduled several other prominent authors for the upcoming months, including National Book Award nominee Jan Gross on Oct. 23. Gross will speak about her book “FEAR: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz.” Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe columnist Thomas Oliphant, who has written “Utter Incompetents: Ego and Ideology in the Age of Bush,” will appear on Nov. 14.
For more information, about the library events, visit www.monroetwplibrary.org.
More information about Friend and his recent book can be found at www.watchingtheworldchange. com.