Alan Chin in Lower Manhattan: You Said You'd Never Forget

A couple takes photographs looking up at #1 World Trade Center under construction. September 11, 2012.

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Nine eleven.”

“Nine eleven who?”

“You said you’d never forget!”

So went the joke that was told to me a few years ago by Abram Himmelstein at The Neighborhood Story Project, already years afterward. The punch line depended on the obviousness of nobody being able to forget, but tricked by the knock-knock formula. Today, for the first time, it felt like a lot of people have finally forgotten. Not really, of course, not when you think about it, but you have to think about it first.

Church Street after the ceremony of the reading of the names of the dead and moments of silence. September 11, 2012.

I spoke on the phone this morning to Yannicke Chupin, with whom I experienced that day together. A few days ago, she was at a formal ceremony at her university in France, and found herself wearing the same black dress that she had worn that Tuesday.

“This dress is for weddings, funerals, and 9/11,” she said, and her colleagues reacted with surprise. “Why?!?”

But they were walking, and she told them she had been in Lower Manhattan; they would hear the full story when they got to the restaurant. She confessed to me that it is a big story after all, even after telling it hundreds of times, and that she still feels the dust in her hair and on her dress whenever she relates the tale. Not something to talk about casually, strolling along the sidewalk. So they spoke of other things, and she fully meant to continue once they sat down. But it was forgotten again.

“The dress is a little shapeless now, but it’s still good.” We laughed for a moment. Then she signed off with:

“Have a good 9/11. Not too emotional but a little though.”

(You can read her remembrances from the time here. In French.)

The view from Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn. September 8, 2012.

At night the Towers of Light Memorial came on again, as they have each September. Eleven years later, it struck me that their meaning has changed. With elegant simplicity, they evoke the ghosts of the destroyed towers, but abstracted, immaterial, and infinite as they reach far higher into the sky than the buildings ever did. But now, the new #1 World Trade Center is nearing completion. Which means that there are three towers – for a brief few hours — until they turn the lights off again.

Inside the 9/11 Memorial Visitor Center: architectural model of the new World Trade Center. September 11, 2012.

Lower Manhattan today was almost entirely ordinary, more so than on any of the other anniversaries that I’ve photographed. Several people were debating at the Speakers’ Corner of Zucotti Park, reminiscent of Occupy Wall Street. Otherwise, there were none of the masses of flowers and tributes that would adorn the fence around Ground Zero, very few of the characters flouting conspiracy theories or selling T-shirts, and none of the streets were closed off for long.

My father photographed the originals under construction in 1970 from Battery Park, when they were almost finished. The same scene this perfect afternoon was as it would be during any weekday lunch hour, far away and long ago.

–Alan Chin

PHOTOGRAPHS by ALAN CHIN / facingchange.org and FOW SANG CHIN

BagNews 9/11 Anniversary posts by Alan Chin: 2011: The 9/11 Decade: Beyond Pushpins On A Calender ; 2010: We’re Just All(ah) Americans Here; 2007:  September 11, 2007