Photo-Trauma: September 11th & the new mediation of disaster

This project is about the photographic representation of the September 11th terrorist attacks; the role of photography within trauma and recovery; and the profound psychological and political effects of the instantaneous globalized media coverage of this event.

It explores critically how the ‘visual culture’ of the events of September 11th, or rather the events as visual culture, force us (as Western viewing publics, and as an academic community concerned with visual media) to look closely at the nature of photography itself: how it is produced, how it circulates, how we make it meaningful, and how, in the end, it aids (or fails to aid) in the process of mourning, recovering, and moving on. It tells the complex story of the photographic representation of these events, presenting an urgent call to reconsider the political and social effects of globalized visual culture more broadly.