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Remembering Lower Manhattan’s Day of Horror, Without Pomp or Circumstance (Exhibit/N-Y Historical Society)

It isn’t memory that is the issue. It is commemoration. Memory, at least right now, is readily summoned. Commemoration is something else altogether.

The new exhibition at the New-York Historical Society, for example, is not a commemoration. “Here Is New York: Remembering 9/11,” which opens today, is exclusively about memory, which doesn’t diminish its power. In two galleries 1,500 inkjet-printed photos taken six years ago during those apocalyptic days are mounted with simple stationery clips. They are reminders of hidden pressure points and buried sensations.

These images will jump-start the memories of any New Yorker who smelled the white dust, saw the drifting burned scraps of paper, who ran through the streets or watched in shock, who lost loved ones or still bears searing physical or mental scars....
Read entire article at Edward Rothstein in the NYT