Jonathan Hyman has dedicated over a decade to documenting the grassroots memorial response to 9/11 . Dr. Jan S. Ramirez, the National 9/11 Memorial Museum’s Chief Curator and Vice President of Collections, has been collecting that resulting work almost as long as Hyman has been out in the field. Please join them for a conversation about Hyman’s pictorial odyssey through 23 states, in a succession of automobiles, which yielded an archive of 20,000+ images. The event, “9/11 and the American Landscape,” will take place on Tuesday, April 5, 2016, at 7:00 p.m. at the 9/11 Memorial Museum Auditorium in New York, New York.
This compilation of pictures represents a web of interconnecting relationships between people–alive and dead–and the memorials created for, and by, their communities. The program complements Beyond Ground Zero: 9/11 and the American Landscape, Photographs by Jonathan C. Hyman, a special exhibition now on view at the museum. What do Hyman’s pictures reveal about the American psyche in a time of turmoil? In the program, Hyman and Ramirez will examine the photographer’s evolving approach to picture taking and his discovery and pursuit of these memorials–from large-scale “plein-air” murals to more intimate messages commemorated on the human body in the form of tattoos. The photographer and curator will share ideas about the evolution of 9/11 iconography and the vernacular language emerging from the popular response to the attacks, sounded in public spaces ranging from automobiles, country barns, and handball courts to bodega walls, hot dog trucks, and firehouse doors.
They will also consider the motives of the artists and shrine-keepers who conducted this impassioned visual conversation, drawing on stories shared with Hyman during hundreds of informal oral histories he gathered over the years. A graduate of Rutgers University, with a master’s degree in studio art from Hunter College, Hyman has traveled to Europe as a US State Department cultural envoy in connection with his 9/11 aftermath images and served as Associate Director for Conflict and Visual Culture Initiatives at Bryn Mawr College’s Asch Center. His photographs have been featured in Time magazine, the New York Times, and on the PBS NewsHour. This program is presented in conjunction with the museum’s exhibition, Beyond Ground Zero: 9/11 and the American Landscape, which can be viewed by program attendees between 6:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. The program will be followed by a book sale and signing.
The event is free, so to reserve a seat, click here.
To view Jonathan’s webpage, click here.
From: Alexandra Drakakis