ICP Visit

One of the most fascinating things for me at my visit to the International Center for Photography were the striking similarities between Peter Sekaer’s photographs of Depression-era America and Eugene Richards’ photographs in the 9/11 exhibit. All of Peter Sekaer’s photographs were black-and-white, which would have been the only option for him in the 1930s. Captions on some of his pictures mention the “liveliness” of a picture; to us, black-and-white offer a certain drabness or old-fashioned feel to the picture and it takes effort to appreciate the “liveliness” of some of the pictures. Eugene Richards, on the other hand, uses black-and-white to communicate the solemnity and raw emotion of the subjects of his photographs. A recurring subject of Peter Sekaer’s work is a group of laborers or migrants sitting, wearing a worn, downtrodden expression that captures the difficulty of the Great Depression. A common subject of Eugene Richards’ and other 9/11-aftermath photographers is a couple of responders and emergency workers, absolutely exhausted and truly weighed down by the horror they find themselves in the midst of.

The most powerful photograph that I saw was part of the here is new york collection. It showed the face of a first responder, face completely covered in dust except for a tear running down his face.