My background is advertising photography, primarily out of Australia, but also more recently in the US through my agent in New York. I was on assignment in New York at the time of the attack. However, I did not shoot the pictures with anything in mind, other than the personal need to record what I was experiencing. There was no commercial motivation.

Outside my professional career I pursue street photography, using a small point and shoot camera. I document everyday people, as and where I meet them. An exhibition of these photographs was held in Sydney in 1999. It was this experience that allowed me to generate the collection of photographs in New York.

I strongly believe the combination of my professional and personal experience is rare and when coupled with my emotional involvement in the events, caused me to capture scenes and imagery largely sidestepped by the mainstream.

I would like to turn my photographs into a book. Not for money, but because I think these pictures give people who were not there, a chance to connect with the city at that time and to reflect on the immensity of the tragedy. Unlike very many of the images we have seen already, my photographs are not confronting, but are instead emotive and compassionate. Very importantly, the photographs create a very personal relationship with the victims through the pictures of  “missing posters” that plastered the city and I see these particular images providing the backbone to the collection.

I truly believe that a high quality photographic book would make a very fitting tribute to the victims and everyone caught up in the catastrophe.

Even though there were a lot of photographers there at the time, I think my body of work is unique for a number of reasons. Firstly, I was not looking for "hard news" stories. I didn't shoot the devastation, or the personal trauma and anguish. My images are not confronting in that way. They are not brutal, but compassionate. My images show a side of the tragedy that the media covered as only one facet in a very big story.  With my background as an advertising photographer, I had the eye to see and to capture the scene and the technical expertise to record it. Yet I was able to do it with a $100 point and shoot camera and film processed in a 1 hour mini lab (using the point & shoot is a personal passion of mine). I had no special access and no special privileges. I was, if you like, a common bystander caught up in the emotion of the time, but with a drive and ability to capture it on film. 

The whole project was shot in one week, a perfect timeframe. Beginning on Monday night with a shot of the two cops on the rooftop with the WTC in the background and concluding a week later with the reopening of Downtown. It is a neat parcel of time and it avoids the need to pay tribute to every funeral and wake and to maintain a vigil through the coming months.

Lastly and maybe most importantly, I was an outsider, a foreigner who whilst connected to the city, was not a part of it. So possibly I saw New York as few others could have. For one week in history I had a box seat, I was there. I did not arrive after the event and I was not drawn to the city like a jackal to a carcass. I was one of the extras on the set the day the world changed, eyes open, camera in hand. These pictures (and words) are my story, my contribution.

As you can see, I believe this is a very important project that deserves the support and enthusiasm of anybody who is in a position to progress it. I believe it could be an immensely valuable contribution to the healing process and a vital link between the city, the victims and the mourners with the many millions who witnessed the events on television or in the press. All it needs is a publisher with the resources, the motivation and the passion to make it happen, an editor and a designer to make the publication exquisite (and fitting), a publicist to tell the world and enough time and energy to get the job done.

If you have any comment I’d love to hear them. But more significantly if you are able to help realise the ambition to publish the material I would be even keener to talk with you.

North Sullivan
north@northpix.com