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“Joel Meyerowitz’s monumental AftermathÌ¢‰â”a book of eerily elegant large-scale photographs of post-9/11 destruction, recovery and clean upÌ¢‰â”feels long overdue.

-GQ Magazine

After September 11th, 2001, the Ground Zero site in New York City was classified as a crime scene and only those directly involved in the recovery efforts were allowed inside. The press was also prohibited from the site, but with the help of the Museum of the City of New York and sympathetic city officials, award-winning photographer Joel Meyerowitz managed to obtain unlimited access. By ingenuity and sheer determination, he was the only professional photographer granted unimpeded right of entry into Ground Zero.

For 9 months, during the day and night, Meyerowitz photographed “the pile,” as the World Trade Center came to be known, and the over 800 people a day that were working in it. Influenced by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange’s work for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, he knew that if he didn’t make a photographic record of the unprecedented recovery efforts, “there would be no history.”

AFTERMATH: WORLD TRADE CENTER ARCHIVE brings to life the tireless determination of the scores of individuals who assisted in the clean-up process, including construction workers, police officers, firefighters, welders or “burners,” engineers, crane operators and volunteers. Presented on a monumental scale, and interspersed with fascinating stories, the book documents the transformation of the site chronologically from piles of devastation to an empty pit six stories below ground. This landmark book offers current and future generations the opportunity to finally travel inside a forbidden city where thousands were brought together by a common cause.

About the Author:

Joel Meyerowitz (b. 1938) is an award-winning photographer, whose work has appeared in over 350 exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world, including The Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. As an early advocate of color photography in the 1960’s, he was instrumental in changing the attitude toward the use of color from one of resistance to nearly universal acceptance. His first book, Cape Light, is a classic and has sold more than 100,000 copies. He is the author of 14 other books, including Bystander: The History of Street Photography and Tuscany: Inside the Light. He is a Guggenheim fellow and a recipient of both the NEA and NEH awards.