Reconstructing 9/11 with Nina Berman — The Still-Shattering Beehive

In recognition of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, this is the second in a series of post presenting diptychs by photographer and BagNews contributor Nina Berman. Created in 2001, most of the panels juxtapose a photo taken in New York’s financial district near the Trade Center site within days of the attacks with a photo taken in New Jersey in October amidst the steel remains of the two skyscrapers.

The photo on the left was taken the morning the Stock Exchange re-opened about an hour or so before the opening bell. Typically an anonymous beehive of activity, the atmosphere among traders, understandably, was concerned and intimate. Although the Stock Exchange didn’t lose anyone in the attack, at this point no one knew that.

Of course, the strong implication here is that an otherwise-impersonal and mechanistic free market — as a “bulls-eye” of corporate power, economic inequality, self-absorption and agnosticism — was the main catalyst for the destruction that day, not only in the loss of the symbolic Trade Towers, but in the trillions of dollars in losses (still cascading) to secure the bee’s way-of-life.

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PHOTOGRAPHS by Nina Berman