In WTC, Rose’s new book project (its Kickstarter campaign ends May 22), the photographer takes a look back at nearly 40 years of his own images in whichthe ubiquitous Twin Towers—and the buildings that have replaced them—appear.
How does One WTC as a figure in the background affect your photos of Lower Manhattan differently than the Twin Towers did?
I never particularly liked the World Trade Center, especially at ground level, where the scale of the complex was overwhelming. But I did come to appreciate the Towers on the skyline. They were like minimalist art of the period—they were perfect backdrop buildings for the architectural drama of Lower Manhattan.
One World Trade Center is just as tall, but somehow less consequential. Because the footprints of the Twin Towers were preserved for the memorial, One World Trade stands a little to the northwest and rarely seems to line up as well visually with the street grid of Lower Manhattan.
What has the experience of going through these photos been like?
Going through my archives all the way back to 1977 was an enormous undertaking. The photographs were made in different formats: 35mm slides, 4x5 negatives, and digital snapshots. I spent countless hours on Photoshop getting it all to be visually coherent. It was also a deeply emotional experience and a reassessment of my entire career going back to being a student wandering Lower Manhattan with my Nikkormat SLR discovering color photography at a time when relatively few were doing it. And at the heart of all this work was the tragedy of 9/11, which I was not present to photograph. I have no idea whether I would have tried to, anyway.
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