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Updated: December 2002 NEW YORK SEPTEMBER 11 #16 on BookSense Bestseller Nonfiction Hardcover list, as reported by PW Daily, January 25, 2001 Special Events !! Exhibition of art from New York September 11 on display ay The New York Historical Society, Two West 77th Street, NY, from November 20, 2001 through February 25, 2002. Features photographs by Steve McCurry, Susan Meiselas, Larry Towell, Gilles Peress, Thomas Hoepker, Alex Webb, Paul Fusco, Eli Reed, David Alan Harvey, Bruce Gilden, Chien-Chi Chang, Bruce Davidson, Richard Kalvar, Raymond Depardon, and Josef Koudelka. On Monday, December 3 at 7:30pm, Magnum Photographers hosted a panel discussion called “New York September 11” at Barnes & Noble, Union Square, NYC (moderator TBA). Photographers include Chien Chi Chang, Bruce Davidson, Paul Fusco, Burt Glinn, Bruce Gilden, David Harvey, Thomas Hoepker, Steve McCurry, Susan Meiselas, Gilles Peress, Eli Reed, Dennis Stock, Larry Towel, and Alex Webb (all of whose work is featured in the book), as well as Elliot Erwitt, Costa Manos, and Inge Morath (whose work is not in the book). Previous Press Coverage !! "The Today Show" aired a segment featuring an interview Thomas Hoepker on November 19. A plethora of photographs were displayed as anchor Ann Curry profusely complimented the project. "The images of the September 11 terrorist attacks on our nation will be ingrained in our minds forever, From the moment they happened and for the two months that have followed. both grief and fear have been captured in thousands of photographs that have shocked us and made us cry. Now, Magnum Photo Agency has put together an entire book called simply 'New York September 11.'" Anchorwoman Anne Curry went on to say, ".... and be a good enough photographer to capture it in a way that really is compelling and tells a story. I think in—in what is truly a stroke of genius, at the very end of the book, you pull together pictures...that are haunting, of what the World Trade Center looked like before all of this. In other words, the life, the city we lost on September 11." "60 Minutes 2”aireda 15 minute segment on December 26, 2001, hosted by none other than Dan Rather. Rather interviewed a panel of Magnum photographers including Gilles Peress, Steve McCurry, Susan Meiselas, Alex Webb, Thomas Hoepker, and Larry Towell. The segment featured the artists discussing their experiences at the time of the event, as they were photographing the scene while it unfolded, as well as their contributions to making the book happen. Images from the book were shown to illustrate the segment. "The most indelible images may be those taken by a remarkable group of people who found themselves in New York City that morning purely by chance. They are members of the Magnum agency, arguably the most respected documentary photo agency in the world," said Rather. "The Magnum agency photographers captured every angle, in all of its horror, in close-up, at a distance, the expressions, the chaos, the shock on that morning of September 11th.... All of these images...have taken on a life of their own. They've become icons, frozen moments in time, helping people to remember and mourn.... The shooters now see things through a different lens. and they know they have captured, as only photographers can, a world of light and shadow where memories live on." “Larry King Weekend” On October 27th at 11pm EST, a one-hour retrospective on the World Trade Center featured David Halberstam as a guest (amongst others including Paul Goldberger, former Mayor Ed Koch, and more). Showed photos (both archival images and day-of images) and mentioned the book several times. "The photographs are brilliant," Halberstam said. "They're really memorable.... I feel honored to be asked to be a part of it, to try and remember what the city was at that moment, why you love the city. And anything I can do to be included makes me, in fact, quite proud." Steve McCurry was featured guest on Oprah! and mentioned the upcoming release of New York September 11, to which Miss Winfrey replied, " I look forward to seeing it!" "CNN: News Night" On November 26th, a segment aired with interviews from Thomas Hoepker and David Halberstam. Host Aaron Brown said, "Something that happened less than three months ago is already remembered as history, history in an instant." Halberstam noted, "I think a book like this freezes it in time, gives it a permanence. There it is. There's the baseline. This is what happened, and the horror of it is real. The horror, the courage, the trauma of it is all captured in this book, which seems to separate yesterday from today, then from now." "...chilling, poignant, and tragically beautiful..." —"EXTRA!" featured photographs from book and interview with Thomas Hoepker in three month anniversary of attacks (December 11, 2001) "Photographers from the Magnum photo group live all over the world and all over to capture images that freeze our times in our minds. Magnum shooters had assembled in New York on September 10th for a business meeting. The next morning, the story of these times burst over their heads. They did what photographers do by training, instinct, and probably trait and personality: they picked up their cameras and started shooting." —"Weekend Edition," NPR, Interview with Susan Meiselas and Thomas Hoepker, taped on the street corner where Meiselas photographed the shot of people running towards her was the Tower came down (December 8, 2001) "New York & Company," WNYC/NPR, Interview with Thomas Hoepker and Susan Meiselas (December 5, 2001) "Weekend Today in New York" NBC, Included the book in roundup on September 11 titles (December 22, 2001, 10:00 AM EST) "...they give us history unadorned in a succession of freeze frames. Whereas writers strain to find words to describe the unimaginable, these images possess a stark and simple eloquence: glimpses of what was before, during and after, caught and preserved in the click of a suhtter." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "Keeping up with the books coming out in connection with September 11 can be maddening...and it won't get easier in the coming months.... Perhaps the most ambitious of the class is New York September 11, a collection by photographers from the Magnum collective, with a foreword by David Halberstam. Publisher powerHouse Books has put it down for a November release. The book was produced in four weeks and includes the work and commentary of such photographers as Gilles Peress, Josef Koudelka, Susan Meiselas, Dennis, Stock Eli Reed, and others. In addition to the extraordinary color and black and white photographs of the destruction... The book will include a section of pictures of the Twin Towers taken over the years by Magnum photographers." —Publishers Weekly NewsLine Thomas Hoepker appeared on “Charlie Rose” in a round-table discussion featuring 3 other photographers. The book, as well as interiors, will be displayed during the show. (October 31, 2001). “IN-Depth” on “C-SPAN Book TV” featured a three-hour interview with David Halberstam on Sunday, November 4th, beginning at noon, EST. They discussed book during this segment. "...their pictures alone carry an emotional charge that is characteristic of the best photojournalism...they indelibly and eloquently describe the shock, terror, agony and despair felt by those close to the flames and clouds of debris. The Hieronymus Bosch-like atmosphere of the images is complemented by high-quality printing and by the design..." —Andy Grundberg, The New York Times Book Review, "Best Photo Books 2001" "No disaster, in war or peace, has been more photographed, from more angles, than the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Images from Sept. 11, before and after, fill six new photography books... New York September 11 by Magnum Photographers, is the most visually ambitious." —USA Today, round-up of books on September 11, listed New York September 11 FIRST !! "...a collection so penetratingly real, it re-aninmates the surreal feelings of many New Yorkers that day. The scale and destruction is made immediate again, and forever inescapable—fresh hell as only virtuoso photography can render it." —New York Daily News (with full page photo) "In the talented hands of these professional shutterbugs, the emotional tug of the photos in this 144-page book is enormous.... You don't have to be a New Yorker to be arrested by the images in this heart-tugging and horrifying book." —Publishers Weekly, PW Daily, Book of the Day (November 16, 2001) “New York September 11 by photographers from the respected Magnum syndicate is the ‘grander’ book. The pictures are elegantly composed, as befits the work of veteran photojournalists hewing to the traditions of Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson: A firefighter is perfectly framed in a photo by Steve McCurry so that the ladder he is climbing cuts diagonally across the jagged frame of a broken window; a coffee-cart abandoned on a dust-choked street in a composition by Gilles Peress looks like an object in an Edward Hopper painting. There’s an introductory essay by David Halberstam, and first-person accounts from the photographers themselves on how they got their stories. The book is masterful, but also detached. It’s a portfolio with its eyes on civic spirit, history, and the future.... [New York September 11] is stately, [the Abrams book] is intimate. Studied separately, each is stunning enough, awesome, whatever adjective is proper for assessing pictures from hell. Taken together, though, a new understanding emerges: this was a day of tragedy for the ages in a city that continues to pulse with life right here and now. New York September 11: A” —Entertainment Weekly "...I do recommend...New York September 11 for the same reason many people made a pilgrimage to ground zero, or as close as we could get to it, in the weeks after the horror: It has to be seen to be believed. Most of us couldn't compose ourselves, much less a photo at the site, so fortunately photographers whose job it is to witness and record history were quickly on the scene... Like the rescue workers, they hurried into the chaos to do their jobs; unlike the rescuers, they weren't welcomed but were forced to sneak past security." —The Wall Street Journal "..when [Halberstam] refers to the 'nobility of ordinary people in times of great crisis' and how this very response thwarted what 'the architects of violence hoped for,' I got a lump in my throat. It stayed there as I leafed through the searing images. You can't offer praise for such pictures, except to say that they immediately dissolved certain reservations I had ab out rushing out a book at all. These are people whose profession it is to document, and once they pulled themselves out of bed and out of shock, document is what they did. Of all these books, this is the only one in which I wanted to live. It takes you back to the very moment, the day, when time stopped." —Vogue "By the end of the first day, it became clear that many of Magnum's most famous photographers had indeed been shooting since the buildings were hit.... [Susan Meiselas'] photographs from September 11 of people running for the their lives with the volcanic smoke behind them are some of the most emotional images to have emerged thus far from the tragedy. Disquieting in a different way is her shot of a banal sculpture of a businessman with his briefcase open, now covered with and surrounded by tons of paper and debris.... [Steve McCurry's] image of a fireman, seen through a shattered window, climbing up a pile of destruction is among the most chilling pictures we have seen from September 11." —Ingrid Sischy, Vanity Fair "The multitude of photography books on september 11 makes you wonder if everyone in New York had a camera that day. The truth is almost as fantastic: Magnum, the legendary photo cooperative, had held its monthly meeting in New York on September 10, and so the next day a cadre of great photographers from around the world fanned out across the city. Their astonishing record is New York September 11." —Newsweek "Eleven of Magnum's photographers happened to be in New York for their agency's monthly meeting on September 10. They awoke the next morning and began covering the biggest story of their lives. This book combines their excellent news photos with gripping accounts of the challenges they faced to do their duty." —National Review online "Combined with first hand accounts of their experiences by the photographers, and a small epilogue of earlier images of the intact towers, the result is a patchwork-quilt eyewitness report from the heart of hell." —A.D. Coleman for Photography in New York "Magnum and powerHouse Books have come together to produce one of the first books out on the September 11th tragedy.... Eleven Magnum photographers were in New York that day, and director Nathan Benn says it was very clear 'our photographers produced a very significant body of work.... the way we approached it is to both respect the event but also to feel it and to witness it from the perspective of the individual.'" —Photo District News The New York Times "Arts & Leisure" section, Front page story on the exhibition at The New York Historical Society, features photographs and mention of the book. "...the work here...gains strength from something fundamentally modest and unprepossessing in the attitudes of the photographers. Trained to move fast and to respond almost automatically, these photographers do not generally get in the way of what they are showing us, the photographs of the early hours of the murderous mayhem...feel mercifully unedited. I have the impression that with these artists the craft is instinctive, that they are reaching us directly as they move suddenly through unfamiliar streets and avenues and find this dusty hell." —The New Republic "The Magnum photographers' still pictures are awful in their gorgeousness." —The New York Times "Arts" by Sarah Boxer "The multitude of photography books about September 11 makes you wonder if everyone in New York had a camera that day. The truth is almost fantastic: Magnum, the legendary photo cooperative, had held its monthly in New York on Sept. 10, and so the next day a cadre of great photographers from around the world fanned out across the city. Their astonishing record is New York September 11." —Newsweek "On the bookstore display tables marked 'New York Interest,' the historical atlases and the architectural guides...have been pushed aside for a more topical addition: books of photographs of the World Trade Center and the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. Mostly, they're shoddy affairs; poor design and badly reproduced photographs betray the haste with which these souvenirs of a disaster were thrown together. But there's a fine exception...New York September 11. I suspect we've become so saturated with images from that week that we're now a little immune to them; the details captured by the Magnum team—shards of metal spinning out at the edges of a dust cloud; the words 'I survived' traced in ash on the hood of a car—still have an impact. (Printed on heavy matte-finish paper and simply designed, the book is also an exemplary production." —Newsday "''Given that this horrible situation had to happen, we were fortunate that we had people with cameras who know what to do,' [Magnum director Nathan Benn] continues. 'A lot of photographers have had, in their careers, photographed combat... Out of that they developed a self-discipline under very extreme circumstances.... With so much very good photography from our exceptional photographers, it seemed the natural thing to begin thinking about a book.'" —Los Angeles Times "The pictures...were determined by such factors as when they woke up, where they were, and how readily they believed the reports they heard. The most astounding shots were taken by Steve McCurry, who had an unobstructed view of the World Trade Center from his office on the north side of Washington Square Park, He ran to the roof and photographed the two towers on fire and then, in stages, their collapse." —Artforum "Whether you were reading the Times Square ticker on that terrifying morning, or listening to the radio far way, the reality remains unbelievable. This is precisely why the photographs are so important. They offer a most personal memoir of the most public experience. They remind us, even inform us, not just of what we saw, but of how we felt. Like a scrapbook of memory and experience, each picture distills and defines feelings that were too overwhelming to comprehend at the time. They may be difficult to look at, but it is easy to see that when the world confuses us, photographs do not lie." —Architecture "This is 9/11 in its purest form. As befitting a legendary photo agency, the Magnum book offer photographs straight-up, with few words. The pictures are beautiful and the vast spreads feel intimate." —MSNBC.com/Newsweek exclusive "Editor's note: In the December issue, Thomas Beller's piece about the New york City skyline, 'New York State of Mind,' neglected to mention that the book New York September 11, by Magnum Photographers, was published by powerHouse Books. With a staff of six, this small independent houe accomplished the remarkable feat of producing this book in less than two months, and as result has been able to donate over $500,000 to The New York Times 9/11 Neediest Fund. We regret the omission." —Vogue "How do you chronicle one of he biggest nightmares in American history—while it's unfolding right in front of you? Photographers from New York's legendary Magnum agency set out to do just that and the results are featured in one of the most compelling coffee-table books of the season." —Austin-American Statesman "...offers devastating evidence of downtown's destruction...one book that will resonate for many of us this year." —The Village Voice "These are top photographers; the pictures are flawlessly composed, and in the Ground Zero section, each captures unique moments of horror and unbelievable spectacle, usually in the recognizable style for which each of these photographers is famous." —Photo District News "These pictures ratify the enormity and the scale of the horror, even while they individualize the heroes and victims." —US News & World Report, "Recommended Reading" "...the Magnum agency, photojournalism's veritable powerhouse, held its [annual] meeting in Manhattan the evening of September 10, so its typically far-flung members were among the first on the scene at the World Trade Center the following morning. By the end of the week, they knew they had a book. Two weeks later, that book, New York September 11, by Magnum Photographers, with work by [Gilles] Peress, [Susan] Meiselas, [Steve] McCurry, Alex Webb, Larry Towell, Paul Fusco, Eli Reed, and others, was at the printer; powerHouse Books hopes to have it in stores by the first week of November." —Vince Aletti, The Village Voice "The New York Historical Society's 'New York September 11, by Magnum Photographers' is a relatively small show of 41 images from the best-selling book of the same name, but it makes a huge impact." —Wall Street Journal "As many times as you may have seen news footage of the scene, these photos still haunt and horrify.... the overwhelming vision that you take away from all these photos is of a world transformed. We see it not only in the apocalypse of the event itself, or in the bizarre juxtapositions of the sacred and the mundane, but also in the eyes of the witnesses—the firefighters headed to the pit, as well as the citizens running for their lives." —The Boston Globe "The consciousness of traumatized Americans may be dominated by relentlessly repeated video footage of September 11, but in the long run it's the still photos that best document the ravaging of our city." —New York "...the end result is a deeply individualistic book, somewhere between journalistic record and personal catharsis." —The Onion "To the extent that it ever can be, the [Steve] McCurry cover is gentler than others we've grown accustomed to... McCurry's picture is dominated by smoke, not flame, the billowing clouds looking like elegant white dreadlocks as the towers—and all those inside them—are destroyed. It is an image of terrible, god-awful beauty." —Frank vanRiper for www.WashingtonPost.com/CameraWorks "...while there are certainly many ways to commemorate the historic date, my choice would be this collection of photographs... This book is a worthy keepsake for anyone who was in or around New York on Sept. 11: it's moving, and brilliantly photographed." —New York Press "...images that will wrench at anyone's heart..." —The Independent "This is sure to become one of the central visual histories of the attack, with its hurting New Yorkers dropping their famed stony indifference to step in the street and mourn—for the moment, anyway, a small town." —San Jose Mercury News "...these books are tastefully done; while there is no hiding the tragic nature of the events they depict, there are no gruesome photos of injuries, nor invasive sots of grieving families.... Memorials usually take the shape of statues or architectural structures in public places. This time, they are made of paper and are found in hundreds of thousands of homes across America." —Wall Street Journal "It took just two weeks for Magnum Photos to edit, write and design one of the first books to be published on the September 11 tragedy.... [Director Nathan] Benn was eager to work with powerHouse, saying he was 'impressed with the consistency of the quality of their books.'... Benn called [Publisher Daniel] Power on Friday, September 14, and asked if he wanted to do a book. 'I said, "Hell yes," recalls Power....'The desire on behalf of everyone to do something, anything, that they could in the immediate days and weeks after the disaster was critical in making things happen at warp speed.... We wanted to help create something intensely powerful and raw right away, in part to help convey the sense of bewilderment, grief and surrealness of New York in the week after the disaster.'" —Photo District News Online "Each photo is more gripping than the one before it..." —Associated Press "...the Magnum book is the most artistic [of the 9/11 titles], filled as it is with startlingly vivid images, many of them showing the World Trade Center towers collapsing and recording the darkness that covered the southern tip of Manhattan that day." —Chicago Tribune, also picked up by Houston Chronicl "The photographs speak for themselves throughout the book, showing the hallmark of photojournalism.... Some of the photos will stay with the reader a long time after putting the book down.... They were documenting history and the results are simply stunning. " —The State-Journal Register "So vivid in our memories, the events of September 11 are even more riveting when seen through the lenses of these extraordinary photographers." —Studio Photography & Design "The most in-demand photography book—'New York September 11, by Magnum Photographers"—sold out its first printing of 100,000 in just 10 days, thereby also generating over $400,000 for the New York Times 9/11 Neediest Fund.... If you can't find that book, several other volumes about Sept. 11 might do, although they lack the pedigree of the prestigious Magnum cooperative..." —The Capital Times "The book closes with 'Farewell to the Towers,' a series of photographs of the Twin Towers. among the most evocative: a woman on the Staten Island Ferry, smelling a bunch of flowers in her hand, the towers in the background, and a couple of Jersey guys and their girlfriends and a six-pack of beer, making out against the side of a car in a waterside parking lot, the towers again just in the background, as they used to be." —Entertainment Today "The 94 photos in 'New York September 11,' many of which run two pages, capture scenes of sorrow and desolation, but also of hope. In images such as a line of firefighters trudging up a mountain of rubble carrying a single thin hose, the photographers clearly convey the enormity of the devastation and the almost Sisyphean vastness of the cleanup task ahead. These same photos also bear testimony to the power of the human will and the indefatigability of united effort." —Des Moines Register "...haunting, surreal, and shocking documentation of the collective feelings of this horrific moment in history." —Georgia Family "Readers will find one of the best collections in New York September 11....This is a stunning book....This book is commendable for its superior photography and comprehensive approach." —Richmond Times-Dispatch "...stunning, hugely dramatic images with a sweep and lushness of color that is also too pleasing to the eye, too beautiful for the subject..." —The Bergen Record "...the work of the Magnum photographers...is magnetic, drawing the viewer back time and again as if to confirm that the Twin Towers really were so swiftly and completely destroyed. Nor is it just the awesomeness of the destruction. The Magnum people also captured a vast array of grim human emotions: fright, shock, disbelief, horror, confusion... 'New York September 11' is in the finest tradition of news photography: honest, immediate, biting, revealing. To take the pictures and publish the book was the right thing to do." —Catholic News Service "The results are observations of a team of professionals witnessing history from a multitude of angles—clearly demonstrating that no two people see the same thing the same way." —Newark Star-Ledger "Over the next month—a blink of an eye in the publishing world—the publisher, powerHouse Books, pulled together designers, bookbinders, and other vendors to donate time and resources to the book.... 'We needed a printer that we could depend on for a tight turnaround, large quantity, and high quality,' [Associate Publisher Craig] Cohen said. 'And we needed a first partner, one with a prominent reputation that would get the others to follow suit. The first call I made was to Meridian.'" —Providence Business News "Robert Nangle, of Meridian Printing, said a book like this one—144 pages hardcover with 74 four-color and 20 black-and-white photos—normally takes a year to produce. But by working around-the-clock and asking other customers to reschedule their press runs, the production and printing was done in three weeks." —Providence Journal "For the full press run of the large, hardcover book, Smart Papers donated 143 tons of paper... Total value: just under $225,000.... [CEO Tim] Needham said he and his company are proud of their role in New York September 11. It allows the 550 employees at his south Ohio company to contribute financial aid to New Yorker impacted by the event. But, perhaps as important, association with the book gives everyone at Smart Papers a sense of participating in documentary history—a project that will have important, lasting value and touch many lives for generations to come." —National Paper Trade Association "New papermaker donates 143 tons of paper for historic book to directly help New Yorkers impacted by tragedy." —Distribution Sales & Management "The recent payment of $200,681.48 to the New York Times 9/11 Neediest Fund bring the totla dollar amount raised by Magnum Photographers' book New York September 11 to $6000,686.66. The money provided legal assistance for such things as securing death certificates, dealing witgh landlords and helping undocumented workers and their families." —Photo District News "The New York Historical society has also launched a 'History Responds' project involving a series of program and exhibitions; it hopes to become...'the primary research repository for all historians and other scholars who will study the events of september 11.' The society's first related exhibition is New York September 11: Magnum Photographers." —Art on Paper "What makes the Magnum book stand out...is its simplicity. It has very little of the purple prose that mars some of the other books, nor the observations that seem trite a year later....Instead, what this book has is powerful photographs speaking powerfully for themselves. It quitely records what happened, demonstrating, more powerfully than a torrent of patriotic speeches ever could, the importance to democracy of a free and feisty press." —Photovision "It has been said the our world will never be the same because of the events of Sept. 11. Magnum Photos have provided us with a permanent record of that day and through the book's purchase, an opportunity to help." —North Shore News The New York Times, "Making Books," Feature on September 11 books Rochester Democrat & Gazette, News brief |
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