Samuel Underberg Building

GGP: 26th Jul 2005 - 14:49 GMT

this building has bizarre and complex meaning to me, as I stood in front of it on 9/11 and from there watched the twin towers fall while fighter jets flew low and at truly terrifying speed around the nearby Williamsburgh Clocktower. I have always loved the lettering and the color, and the way it has been, over many years, a canvas of rust and paint and graf and change. I have some photos (prints) of the traffic jams and planes by the clocktower from that day. I might try to find a way to post these if I can dig them up. i have them deeply buried away.

elaine: 26th Jul 2005 - 14:52 GMT

blimey, that's quite a picture you paint, how extraordinary and apocalyptic

Peter: 26th Jul 2005 - 14:58 GMT

ggp: i would love to see those. ive yet to develop my photos from that day.

GGP: 26th Jul 2005 - 15:10 GMT

why did you not develop them, Peter? I ask because my internal reaction to taking pictures on that day was very ambivalent. I felt ashamed, somehow, for shooting pictures while this unbelievable thing was happening. Like a voyeur or a user. Yet somehow, taking the pictures felt like the only thing to do--it was a very instinctive/automatic reaction (defense?). Then, of course, I never wanted to look at them again.

Peter: 26th Jul 2005 - 15:12 GMT

oh i had no qualms about taking them... i take photos of everything. i just never got around to developing them. im not sure i wanna look at the photos i took. but i do know right where the undeveloped roll is, and i figure ill get it processed one of these days, heh.

elaine: 26th Jul 2005 - 15:22 GMT

i don't believe you 'never got around' to developing them, i think it's deeper than that

Peter: 26th Jul 2005 - 15:27 GMT

it probably is, and everything that can be said about that day has been said, so ill just leave it at that. i wrote a post about it, and since then, have avoided fretting about it too much, beyond the occasional photos and stories and such.

elaine: 26th Jul 2005 - 15:28 GMT

i think not developing them is a perfectly valid response, by the way

Peter: 26th Jul 2005 - 15:34 GMT

i recall taking a photo of a glass door that had a hastily written sign reading "closed due to national emergency". reflected in the door's glass was tower 2 falling. and smoke. lots and lots and lots of smoke.

im not sure i really want to see that again. seeing it once, even as a disconnected reflection, was real enough. but i am glad i was wrapped up in making that reflected photo, and didnt have to watch it directly. i was obsessing over the aesthetics of the shot as people screamed and ran, as far as i could see down the avenues in each direction. defense mechanisms are strange, indeed.

as i said, i have the roll. i will likely develop it sometime in the nearish future, especially nwo that ive thought about it again. i dont have nearly the cathartic, crippling level of neurosis about that day as i used to.

time's passing works wonders.

elaine: 26th Jul 2005 - 15:45 GMT

well it looks to me that not everything that can be said about that day has been said, not by a long way

Peter: 26th Jul 2005 - 15:50 GMT

i guess that was just my nice way of saying that ive said about all i wish to say about it. at the risk of sounding obtusely melodramatic, its not something i personally enjoy analyzing, discussing or thinking about in any way beyond the cursory.

but at least i dont freak out when i see footage of it on tv anymore!

elaine: 26th Jul 2005 - 15:55 GMT

no, and you did just say something both real and new about it, which belies your breeziness. it's not that i think you should say anything more, just that you did

Peter: 26th Jul 2005 - 15:55 GMT

heh, ok :)

see, i could go on and on and on about it for days... and i try to avoid that, the sort of scatterbrained yammering that comes from not yet completely digesting a sutiation.

but its nice to knwo i can here, wheneveri feel like it!

elaine: 26th Jul 2005 - 15:59 GMT

and i think that the more interesting responses to something like that come out over some time, and like you say, you need to digest for a bit. some of the most fantastic cultural products come out of the longer look

piranha erem: 26th Jul 2005 - 17:33 GMT

i sure like that skull graf on the bottom photograph.

GGP: 23rd Nov 2006 - 04:18 GMT

yeah, it's been razed all right. it's an empty lot now with some greenish bricks strewn about.

Peter: 8th May 2009 - 02:41 GMT

i miss the underberg :(