Thomas Hoepker, whose
photo I posted
previously,
responded to the
controversy sparked by Frank Richs
interpretation. I responded in turn:
|
The picture, I felt, was ambiguous and confusing: Publishing it might distort the
reality as we had felt it on that historic day.
| |
It doesn't matter what the subjects or the photographer were thinking at the
time that the photo was taken. What matters is what the photographer was thinking when he
(initially) withheld it from publication. As Hoepker said, he felt the pitcure was ambiguous,
and ambiguity was the last thing many people wanted to feel in the days and weeks (and,
unfortunately, years) after 9/11. They wanted it to be Pearl Harbor. Others wanted it
to be Dealey Plaza. Some couldn't shake the impression that it was just
Die Hard.
The people who would have been outraged by Hoepkers photo in September 2001
and continue to express outrage five years later were relieved by the simplification they
thought 9/11 brought to their lives. "It was an act of war," they declared, and
they have been desperate to keep that state of war going, lest they have to start thinking
critically about enormously complex subjects, as the people in Hoepkers photo appear to be
doing.
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