Multimedia Gallery: Four Years Later - 9/11 Commemoration

A little over a month ago I went to photograph the commemoration event of the attacks on the World Trade Center at Ground Zero.

I arrived at Ground Zero at 07:30 a.m. on the morning of September 11th and stayed until 11:00 p.m. Not to photograph the official ceremony where about 640 siblings of those who died read the names of the 2.749 victims but to photograph the people who came to Lower Manhattan to mourn and remember.
It was an intense and from time to time touching day. This gallery might seem a little pathetic but that's how I experienced this day.

In addition to taking photographs I also recorded sound with my little Mini Disc player. It was not the first time I recorded sound but it's the first time I actually use it. Inspired by Magnum In Motion, MSNBC, The New York Times and some other websites who already build multimedia galleries for certain topics and stories, combining photographs with sound, I decided that it's time for me to do the same thing. I just think that sound and in this case original sound recorded the same day and the same place adds another dimension to a set of photographs.

I had to learn how to use sound editing software and had a hard time to tune the sound for the photographs. But the biggest part of the work for this multimedia gallery did a great friend of mine...
To make this project happen I needed somebody to help me out with the Flash programming. Me and Flash... Forget it. As so often my friend agreed to help me out and not only build the Flash file for it but he build a template which I can easily use again for other multimedia stories without the need to programm in Flash. Man, thanks a lot for this!

The complete feature takes 5 minutes and 32 seconds to view. If you do not have Flash installed or have a very slow internet connection you are also able to view the photographs as an HTML gallery by following the link at the bottom of the pop up.
Any comments and feedback on this multimedia gallery are highly appreciated. To see the other galleries I created (without sound) check out the Photosets section.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 10:38 PM | Comments (10)

An American Flag on City Island in the Bronx

Not quite as nice as the one from yesterday but still another one for my collection. More Flags in the archive, something else than flags tomorrow. ;-)

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

The Flag under a rainy sky in Williamsburg

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:21 PM | Comments (7)

The American Flag on cars

More for my collection of American Flags in the archive.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

Carlos Arredondo - A father who lost his son in Iraq

Click image for a larger view

This image shows 45 year old Carlos Arredondo at the Anti-War March in Washington DC on September 24th. On August 26, 2004 - his 44th birthday - Mr. Arredondo was told by three Marine officers that his son, Alexander Arredondo was killed in Iraq. In that month Carlos Arredondos son just turned 20 years old.
As a reaction to this Carlos Arredondo set the Marine van on fire while he was inside and suffered severe burns. I am not going to post the whole story about what happend that day here. You can read more about it on the websites of CBS News, Not in Our Name or CNN.

Carlos Arredondo joined the Gold Star Families For Peace, an organization of families who have lost relatives in the Iraq war. From on August 15th 2005 he joined the "Bring them home now" tour to have the public remember the war.

Letter written by Alexander Arredondo to his parents - Click image for a larger view

E-Mail send to Melida Arredendo by the Army - Click image for a larger view

I met Mr. Arredondo in front of the White House where he was protesting against the war in Iray. As he was holding up a portrait of his son in uniform he dispensed an envelope containing a copy of a letter his son wrote and a copy of an e-mail which was send to Mr, Arredondos wife by the US Armed Forces.

Today someone told me that the photograph of the guy with the death-mask I posted a couple of days ago doesn't give a feeling of movement, of something else to come. "But this leaves me with something else. A dead sense of no hope and it saddens me. It is an incredibly cold feeling."
Well I'd say rightly. There is so much cruelty going on, so many people died and do still die.
But Carlos Arredondo shows a different way to go. He turns his grief into the fight against such things happening again. He sees hope and is part of a movement trying to change things.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 10:56 PM | Comments (6)

American Flags used in diversity

And here we go again with two more photographs showing the American Flag. The first photograph shows Zegir Berisha, a native from Serbia who came to the United States 35 years ago. He has four sons who were born here. Two are Marines and two are in the Army. Although he didn't get the US citizenship because he is from Serbia as he told me, he loves America. He stand with the American people and their flag to fight terrorism.
The second image shows two women who build a rocket out of cardboard and who wear it as a penis with the American Flag on it as a form of protest against the government and the US led war.

My interest in the American way to tread their flag is still big. As an Austrian I am not used to this huge amount of patriotism. I already wrote about this in an earlier post from mid June. When I came to New York I somehow started to loosely collect photographs from the American Flag. And I still do. I realized that my collection got pretty big by now. I didn't publish most of these photographs yet but some can found in the archive and I plan to do a gallery on that in the near future.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:21 PM | Comments (4)

Anti-War Protests in Washington, DC - Part III

More Anti-War Protests here and here.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:13 PM | Comments (3)

Anti-War Protesters in front of the White House

Christian Lehner wrote a story (in German) about last Saterdays Anti-War march in Washington, DC on the FM4 website (Austrian Broadcast) and used a selection of photographs I took to illustrate his article. The article can be found on the FM4 website.

More photographs and my own impressions about Saterdays march can be seen/read in yesterdays post. More to follow. Peace out!

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 08:53 PM | Comments (8)

Anti-War Demonstration in Washington, DC

My Saterday started at three o'clock in the morning. I got up, took the train through the Bronx, through Manhattan into the heart of Brooklyn where I was supposed to meet the Brooklyn Parents for Peace and Christian Lehner from the Austrian Broadcast to go to Washington, DC for the Anti-War march.

I arrived a little early (05:20 am), the streets have been quiet, almost no traffic. Christian came a couple of minutes after me and the first participants of the march waited around the corner already. We got to talk to a couple of people and finally left with the second bus at about half past six. It was an interesting four hour bus ride to the capital city of the United States. I was sitting next to Mark Gibian, a Williamsburg artist whose father originally immigrated from Prague and whose family still owns a glove shop in Vienna. Austrian connections everywhere. We had a good time talking about a lot of things. Want to try and meet him again before I return to Austria.

After a stop on one of the motorway service areas we got to the outskirts of Washington. The stop on the motor way already promised a lot of people coming to the march. Buses with peace-protesters whereever you looked. Arriving in DC there were buses and hundrets (if not thousands) of people waiting and trying to get onto the subway. Thanks Washington for not letting buses into the city, thanks for running the subway trains on a Saterday scheduled and thanks for doing subway construction work that day. It easily cost us an extra hour. But of course that didn't happen because officials wanted to keep the number of demonstators down... Oh no...

Anyway, we finally got into town with good cheer, found our way to the rally and just came in time for the beginning of the march. I started walking in the march on my own and sometimes even had troubles to take photographs because I hardly could move because of the crowd. Man, there were so many people holding banners and signboards, speaking out against war.

It was a loud but non-violent demonstration. People of all races, from all over the country, young and old, veterans and relatives of military families attended. And I think there have been well over 100.000 people on the streets. Hard to prove since the numbers published by organizers of such events are always to high and the numbers pubished by police is always to low. I usually take those two numbers and the one in the middle seems to come closest. Nowadays Washington officials no longer publish estimated numbers of attendses to such events. I wonder why... Could it be because they don't want the world to know that a lot of Americans are against the war?
As the New York Times reports Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey thinks that the 100,000 people mark was probably hit.

Regarding my feelings throughout the march... I have to say that I was touched by that many people protesting for what they believe in: Peace. I saw parents who lost their sons in Iraq, I saw Vietnam war veterans who don't believe in war anymore. Iraq war veterans who came back from war not that long ago, a lot of them hardly out of teenage age. And there were people stopping in front of the White House stretching their finger towards it. I kind of liked that. But what I even liked more have been those who stopped in front of the White House to form the Victory sign with their hands. Just as the man in the middle photograph told me (unfortunately I didn't get his name): "He is sending peaceful spirits into the White House to stop that mess".

More photographs of the Anti-War demonstration in Washington, DC tomorrow.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:57 PM | Comments (7)

A woman paying tribute at Ground Zero

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:58 PM | Comments (2)

Man carrying a 9/11 flag near Ground Zero

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:59 PM | Comments (6)

9/11 - New York I hope you are feeling better

Click image for a larger view.

I've spent the entire day, from 07:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. at Ground Zero to photograph those remembering the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. I only left for about an hour and a half in the evening to take the ferry to Staten Island and back. Getting a better sight onto the Manhattan Skyline with the two beams of light marking the places where the World Trade Center towers once stood.

It was a pretty intense and long day. I walked around all day and it was touching although I didn't know anyone who died four years ago. I took a lot of photographs and recorded sound to do a feature on that.

Let's leave it with the following wisdom I found today:

Yo New York

I Love You

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:59 PM | Comments (10)

The American Flag on the old Staten Island Ferry Station

More American Flags here.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 10:48 PM | Comments (4)

W.B. Himself - Or the American Flag in advertisement

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:22 PM | Comments (2)

A father and his sons wearing the American colors

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 07:07 PM | Comments (3)

World Trade Center and Statue of Liberty in Manhattan

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 05:53 PM | Comments (1)

Some more American National Flags

It's time to continue my series on American National Flags. A topic which still interests me a lot since we Europeans don't know this strong showing of patriotism. Although I talked to a lot of Americans about this topic it's still a little strange for me. I've once written about that already and received some interesting comments of my visitors.
Both images have been taken in Williamsburg. The first one shows part of a garage door, the second one a window of a liquid store.
You can see all entries/images on American National Flags or Patriotism here.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 03:41 PM | Comments (1)

More people with American Flags on Independence Day

I met Jim and his family on 4th of July at Ground Zero, the former World Trade Center site. Jim's father served in the US Army and the American Flag is a symbol of freedom to him. It's about remembering the fallen. That's the cost of freedom he told me.
Jim and his family live in California, they just came to visit New York. What makes the States so special for this family is that everyone is able to freely move around and do whatever they want to. There are no checkpoints and checking of IDs as between single states in the US as there is between countries in Europe.

This is Billy. He told me that the United States of America are like one big family. "We are united and people are standing together in these hard times. You know, if a country doesn't stand together it breaks up. People that you never expected are standing together since 9/11. But New York is going to be New York no matter what happens. But still a lot of things changed". The flag is a thing of freedom for him. "Man I gotta go, I just stopped by to pay my respect." Billy looks over to Ground Zero, he crosses himself and drives away.

This is (for now) the end of my Independece Day series on people wearing the American Flag. It's been interesting to talk to those people, getting a little insight into what they think on this huge American holiday.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 08:18 PM | Comments (1)

Rachel wearing the American Flag as a scarf

My attention was drawn to Rachel, whom I met on Coney Islands sidewalk, because she wore a scarf showing the American flag. Since I was after people showing their US origin on Independence Day I approached her by introducing myself. I told her that I am an Austrian photographer currently doing an internship at a photo agency in Manhattan and that I am interested in the way Americans see their flag, that I want to know what makes America so special for them.

Rachel was very friendly and noticed my German accent. She started to talk a little German and told me that she lived in Germany for half a year and in England for quite a long time since her husband is from there. Regarding my questions we had a rather long and really interesting and nice conversation and she basicly told me the following:

Her family is jewish and they immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe about a 100 years ago. It was the one place which gave home to her family. And the States have done more for Jewish people than any other country in the world.
Regarding the flag: it's not about fascism. It's just a sign of being American. MTV is cool nowadays, rockclubs are cool. But what about God and the flag. They aren't cool and that's a petty. People tend to have this all or nothing view. Take Bush for example. Every president makes unpopular decisions. Eight years later the next president comes and he'll make unpopular desicions as well.
When Rachel lived in England she felt very uncomfortable about being American in Britain although Britain is Americas number 1 ally. People asked her why Bush was elected, what's going on in Iraq, they asked her why this and this decision was made by the government. She pretended not to like what's going on the States to be left alone.

And when does Rachel wear the American flag? Hm... Only on special days. Well, only on July 4th and on Memorial Day probably. She told me:"I am wearing it to get a laugh out of people. I guess it's about getting attention".

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 05:59 PM | Comments (1)

Joe from Coney Island on Independence Day

Today was Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest on Coney Island. So I got up very early this morning, went to Coney Island (which is about 2 and a half hours away from Co-Op City) to photograph this crazy contest. I got there about 2 hours before the contest actually started but I had absolutly no chance to see something or photograph something. There have already been so many people lining up for it.
Kind of a disgusting thing... The guy who won last year, won again today but he missed his own world record of 53½ Hot Dogs within 12 minutes. He only ate 49 today... What a looser... ;-)

So no photographs of the International Hot Dog Eating Contest. But I started to walk around on Coney Island (where I got a really, really bad sunburn) and talked to a view people wearing the Amercian Flag in one or the other way on todays Independence Day.

One of the people I met was sixty year old Joe who lives just three blocks away from the beach and who is selling cars. Joe was hanging out on the parking lot, wearing shorts showing the American Flag and his head was covered by a American flag headscarf.
I asked him what the American flag means to him and what the most important thing is which makes the United States so special.
He told me that the flag is kind of a reminder for all the soldiers fallen or fighting in a war. His father died in World War II. It's about showing support for the army.
And what's the thing which makes the States so special? Well, he was born here, he was raised here and he never left the US except for a trip to Puerto Rico (which is part of the States). All people, people from all countries, whether they are from the US, from Europe or from another part of the world, have opportunities. All have equal opportunities and rights he told me. So he is proud to be American.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 08:50 PM | Comments (2)

Two more American National Flags II

This is another photograph of my loose collection of American flags withing photos. After posting the last two I got an e-mail from a former Co-Op City resident writing that he heard similarly from other young Europeans that American patriotism strikes them as unusual. Here is an excerpt of that e-mail:

"I've heard similarly from other young Europeans that American patriotism strikes them as unusual. (In one case I'd mentioned to a Dutch epenpal that I'd gone with my children and my father-in-law to my town's small Memorial Day service and parade.) I think the primary difference is that in American the nation, the government, and the people have always been the same thing. The flag does not represent a government which rules us, it represents the people that we are. As a nation of immigrants, there is not symbol of our identity that is not a symbol of the country. And while we've lost soldiers, the country has never been truly devastated by war to the degree much of Europe has been, so the people find both war and its trappings -- which is how Europeans tend to see any signs of nationalism -- less distasteful. (That's a positive reinforcement cycle: since we fly flags other than at times of war, and other than when flown by the goverment and its armed forces, we don't view flags as part of the war machine, and we are thus more likely to fly them.) How does a European express "I am proud and glad to be part of this greater community"?"

I think this is an interesting point of view. Of course I can mainly speak about Austrians only. But I think that Europeans generally do not feel the need to express that they are proud and glad to be part of this greater community. Why? Because I don't think that Europeans see theirselfs as part of a great community. I don't think that the majority of Austrians are proud to be Austrian. At least I am not. I wouldn't want to be American or French, Italian, Chinese or whatever as well because I do think that the country doesn't really matter. I couldn't be proud to be born in a certain country just because of this country...
Am I wrong? Would be great if you'd leave your opinions on that as a comment on this site.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 03:50 PM | Comments (10)

Two more American National Flags

These photos show two more American Flags (well, not actually flags but something similar) I found on my way through New York City. Whenever I stumble upon a US flag I am taking a photograph of it. It's not a serious project I am working on, let's say I just collect them.

My week has been extremly buisy at work. Since everyone is preparing for the AGM (Annual General Meeting) of Magnum which will take place this month in Paris there are a lot of presentations to be set up. That's the reason why I kind of neglected this photoblog a little bit (at least I got the feeling that I did). I just didn't have that much time to roll around the city, taking pictures, experiencing adventures or meeting new people. Not every day can be a eventfully day.

I am already very much looking forward to this weekend. There's a lot going on in New York. The Puerto Rican Day Parade will be this Sunday, there will be the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party in Madison Square Park on Saterday. Sunday afternoon I'll be going to Coney Island again to record some sounds with Claudine and BJ from work. And I do also have to work on a website for one of my Austrian customers. I was able to take the day off on Monday to go on working on that website. So be prepared for some nice shots and stories about this weekend.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:49 PM | Comments (3)

Memorial Day Service in Co-Op City

I started my day off by calling my girlfriend to wish her a happy birthday! We've been talking for a while and finally used our webcam for the first time. These services suck! Calling using Skype works pretty well. As soon as you want to use another service like Yahoo Mesenger to use a webcam as well everything gets a mess. But still funny to see the other one on a small window on your screen even if it's most of the time like a tableau.

I attended the Memorial Day Service in Co-Op's City veterans memorial park later. Memorial Day is a patriotic holiday in the United States. A day to honor and remember Americans who gave their lives while serving the U.S. in a war.
Kind of strange for me to see how people celebrate the fallen soldiers, to hear different kinds of hymns and battle songs, to hear speeches where people talk about their heros, about the brave men and women who serve their country. Speeches where they talk about freedom and democracy, where they state that freedom is not free...
Rather strange and way too much patriotism in my European eyes. But as far as things are not only black and white, as always there is another side as well.

I met Mrs. Carmen Raquel Natal at the Memorial service, an elderly woman living in Co-Op City. She was visibly touched by the ceremony. I started to talk to her and she told me that her grandson who can be seen on the photo standing together with his father and herself is in Iraq at the moment. Efraim Luis Natal is 23 years old. He has been in Iraq for one and a half years already, intermitted by one vacation at home. He got a two months old daughter he didn't yet see because she was born while he was away.
I guess it's hard to form an opinion about something like these patriotic acts as long as there are people like Mrs. Natal who have a beloved one in a war or who lost a family member there. Who knows how I'd act if I came into such a situation myself.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:51 PM | Comments (2)

316 (Threehundredandsixteen) American National Flags

This post should have originally been titled "The last Weekend on Long Island before my girlfriends return home" but I decided to change the titel to the above one because the new title is related to the weekend in Long Island as well and those flags have been very interesting to us.

As a end of this weeks visit of my girlfriend Karin (she had to leave this evening to fly back home) we decided to spend the weekend in Montauk, a small village on Long Island.
After we knew that we wanted to go to Long Island we decided to rent a car for the weekend. Better coming around from beach to beach or from village to village in case of we wouldn't like the place we where going. So we got up Saterday morning, checked the trip route on Google, wrote everything down and left the apartment to go the Hertz, picking our car up.

We had our first nice experience while waiting for the bus in Co-Op City. A family of geese were walking around the green areas. I often saw them while passing by Section Five of Co-Op City which is directly next to the Hutchinson River but I never saw them here in Section One. Section Five is rather far away and there is a highway in between... A few minutes after we came to the bus station the geese (on the other side of the street yet) decided to move over to a new meadow and slowly started to cross the street in a perfect line. One after the other. Traffic had to stop - they didn't seem to be in a hurry. A very nice situation.

However, we arrived at Hertz on East 90th street to pick our rental car up about an hour and a half late. I've already been thinking about the possibility that they might have no car left from the smallest budget range. Lucky as we were they didn't, we got a free upgrade and finally sat into a brand new, huge and damn comfortable Volvo XC 70 including a GPS Navigational System. I still had the prejudice that these systems do not work well and probably lead us somewhere we didn't want to go. But luckily it worked very well and we found our way to Long Island.

To refere back to this posts title, we somehow started to count american national flags after leaving the city. We've been looking for flags on the roadside flying in front of houses, at gas stations, in car windows or on top of company buildings. We started to count while driving on the highway which was not such a big deal, but when we came to Long Island and drove through villages and towns we got really buisy. While we drove about 140 miles (approx. 225km) we counted 316 american flags. I am sure we missed some since we didn't count in New York City and in the town of Montauk. That's an amazing number isn't it? America is completely different in terms of patriotism than every other country I've been to. If you for example use an Austrian national flag in my homecountry to show that you are proud of this country everyone looks at you as if you would have got crazy. Personally I feel a bit uncomfortable with too much patriotism and bonds to a certain country.

Despite the fact that Karin had to leave this evening our weekend on Long Island was great. Montauk is a very beautiful place, it's quiet (at least at this time of the year), the beaches are very nice and clean and the atlantic ocean... What should I say... I love the atlantic ocean. And since Montauk has one of the busiest fisher harbors in New York State there are also some great places for delicious seafood. I got the second best tuna steak (after one I had in Portugal) of my life in a place called "Lenny's on the Dock" which is located directly at the harbor.

We found a nice small Motel with the sea just across the street in which we stayed for the night. We wanted to visit the lighhouse in the morning but there have been too many people there and the entrace was 16 dollars. Too much if you can have a beautiful beach for free. The way back to New York was not that good. Too much traffic, rain and a both of us have been in a thoughtful mood since we won't see each other for two months. But we got a new counting idea for our next trip. The next time we travel in the States by car we are going to count the yellow "Support Our Troops" and "God Bless America" ribons sticked to a lot of cars.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:39 PM | Comments (5)