Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11

Friend, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845115457 ISBN 13: 9781845115456

Publisher: I.B. Tauris, 2007

"Watching the World Change" is a unique and powerfully affecting account of the most universally observed news event in human history: the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. David Friend tells the stories behind the images that altered our sense of our world forever, from the happen stance shots taken by standers as the first tower was struck to the scene of three firemen raising the Stars and Stripes at the site that would soon be known as Ground Zero. He gives us the experiences of the photographers and rescuers, victims and survivors. He shows how advances in television, digital photography, and the Internet produced an effect whereby more than two billion people saw the terrible events as they happened. He explores the controversy about whether images of 9/11 are redemptive or exploitative, and he shows how photographs help us to witness, to grieve, and finally to understand the unimaginable.

Review:

"'The crystalline images of September 11 soon became blurred, either by hysteria or by exploitation or by a certain reticence that mutated into near denial. At last we have a book that looks steadily through the lens and does not flinch, but which cancels voyeurism by its care and measure and by the multiplicity of its perspectives.' - Christopher Hitchens '...impressively researched...Friend communicates a profound knowledge and love of photography.' -British Journalism Review 'Friend's excellent writing conveys more of the truth of the day than photographs can.'- Garrison Keillor, The New York Times"

About the Author:

David Friend, Vanity Fair's editor of creative development and formerly Life's director of photography, won an Emmy award for the documentary 9/11. www.watchingtheworldchange.com