N.Y.’s State of Mind

To respond to the unthinkable--that was everyone’s task after Sept. 11. In New York, impromptu shrines and commemorations sprouted like mushrooms after rain--notes and photographs dotting walls and fences near ground zero, candles and memento mori in Union Square. And then came more concerted efforts, organized exhibitions of art, photography and writing.

Three of these 9/11 shows are coming to Los Angeles, starting with the opening today of “Faces of Ground Zero: A Tribute to America’s Heroes” at the Skirball Cultural Center. On June 30, “The September 11 Photo Project” opens at the Armory Northwest annex of the Armory Center for the Arts, and on July 14, “Reactions” comes to the Williamson Gallery at Art Center College of Design, both in Pasadena.

The Pasadena shows have an open-tent, bring-your-own-art ethos; the Skirball offering is a more traditional, artist-driven show, but each began with just one person’s private sense of mission--”What can I do to cope with these events?”

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“Faces of Ground Zero” was the brainchild of veteran Life magazine photographer Joe McNally. Before Sept. 11, he had worked with the largest Polaroid camera in the world--the size of a one-car garage, it takes 40-by-80-inch “instant” pictures--for a story on the camera for National Geographic.

After Sept. 11, he had the idea to use the camera--housed in a studio 20 blocks from the World Trade Center--to create a series of 189 portraits, slightly larger than life-size, of firefighters, paramedics, survivors, community leaders and others--all members in one way or another of the ground zero community.

“We made a promise that whatever time of day they came in, we would shoot them,” McNally said by telephone while on an assignment in Maryland. The studio opened its doors two weeks after Sept. 11 and stayed open for three weeks. Among those captured on film: firefighters Billy Ryan and Mike Morrisey, paramedic Juana Lomi, Cantor Fitzgerald’s managing director David Kravette, and then-New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

The harried Giuliani canceled on McNally and his team three times before he finally showed up, and in the resulting portrait, he looks scrunched and uncomfortable in his crisp black suit. “Giuliani was under tremendous stress,” McNally recalled. “I feel the experience had literally squeezed him.”

Each subject was interviewed, and in the exhibition an extract of their stories appears with their photographs. Some tell of tragic losses, others of amazing escapes. One of the most extraordinary survival stories comes from window washer Jan Demczur who, trapped in a Tower One elevator with five others, managed to pry open the elevator door with his squeegee. When faced with a plasterboard wall, he and the others in the elevator used the same instrument to break through.

“These people had really harrowing days, and the emotions in the studio were quite high,” McNally says. “After the shoot they would come back and look at their pictures on the floor. Some people went to pieces, seeing themselves and telling their stories.” In January, 87 of McNally’s portraits were displayed in Grand Central Terminal, where an estimated quarter million people saw them. Since then, a scaled-down show of 58 photographs has traveled to Boston, London and San Francisco. In L.A., the Skirball was chosen because it had the right amount of space and adequate security. “We felt that it really did fit our mission,” says museum director Adele Lander Burke. “We see ourselves as a meeting place, a place to discuss ideas. We wanted to honor these people.”

“The emotional impact is quite high when you see them all together,” McNally said. “It derives from the enormity of the event, then the stature and dignity of these people.”

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Michael Feldschuh, amateur photographer and managing director of an investment company, lives and works in downtown Manhattan. On Sept. 11 and the days that followed, he took pictures of the aftermath, including the shrines and ceremonies in Union Square. He noticed that many others had their cameras in hand as well.

Why not put all those photos together in an exhibition everyone could see? Feldschuh posted fliers and created a Web site, asking for submissions--no more than three per photographer, not larger than 11 by 14 inches--and soon his mailbox was flooded.

Feldschuh rustled up donated space on Wooster Street in lower Manhattan to use as a gallery. He found volunteers to fix it up, and he paid for miscellaneous expenses out of his own pocket.

On Oct. 13, the doors opened on “The September 11 Photo Project” with 200 pieces, all with a photo component and displayed simply, via binder clips hung on pins stuck in the walls. By the time it closed on Jan. 10, another 3,500 or so had been added by visitors, creating a massive collage of smoking buildings, fleeing citizens, exhausted rescue workers, as well as street memorials and demonstrators wearing signs proclaiming “Our grief is not a cry for war.” Over the course of three months, according to Feldschuh, 40,000 visitors came to the gallery space.

Since then, he has produced a book based on the exhibition and hired a small staff to supervise a tour of the show. It has already made stops in Washington, D.C., and Sacramento.

“We continue to collect and display,” said Feldschuh by phone from New York, “and we don’t edit people.”

The same “come one, come all” attitude will prevail at Armory Northwest. The photos will be clipped and hung. “We’ll just be taking them out of the shipping crate and hanging them, one after the other,” says Jay Belloli, the Armory’s curator. With 17,000 square feet available at the Northwest space, there will be room for the entire collection, which now numbers 5,500, with space left over for photographs by Angelenos who want to contribute to the project.

“We really want people to have as direct an experience as possible,” says Feldschuh. “As soon as you put it into a frame, people start seeing it differently. This is not a museum exhibition, it’s a mobile exhibition for people to bear witness. We wanted to keep the feeling of the shrine; the authenticity lies in the fact that it’s very real, that it hasn’t been processed.”

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Exit Art, a multimedia cultural space on lower Broadway known for showing edgy work, opened “Reactions” in January. The space’s founders, Papo Colo and Jeanette Ingberman, began gathering work for it shortly after Sept. 11.

The idea was not just commemoration but to explore the way individuals, artists and non-artists, were changed as a result of the attacks.

“We felt an urgency right away to do something,” says Ingberman. “We were very close to ground zero, and we wanted to hear reactions from everybody.”

The gallery made a general call for submissions via mail and e-mail: Tell us how this changed your life on an 8 1/2-by-11-inch sheet of paper.

“That was the most democratic way we could think of having everyone submit their work,” says Bibi Marti, a staffer at Exit Art and a “Reactions” coordinator.

Responses, in words and pictures, came from 3,500 people from 25 countries.

A few well-known artists were among them. William Wegman, famous for his photographs of Weimaraners, sent in a sketch and wrote about his memories of the construction of the World Trade Center’s twin towers.

Conceptual artist Carolee Schneemann sent photographic images of people falling. Christo and Jean-Claude, the wrap-art duo, sent a piece based on a future project for New York City.

Some of the pieces are sentimental, some are harsh, says Marti. Some express “ambivalence about why Sept. 11 happened; some people pointed out our dependence on gas and oil. One person wrote ‘curb your god’ [a play on ‘curb your dog’]. We didn’t censor the show at all.” The response, says Ingberman, has been overwhelming. The show attracted out-of-towners who had never been there before, and viewers who pored over every image.

“We don’t really have national rituals to deal with death,” she adds, as an explanation, “and in a way people want to be part of something bigger. I don’t know if I could top this, to do an art project that goes beyond the art world.”

* “Faces of Ground Zero: A Tribute to America’s Heroes” (through July 14) at the Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., L.A. Tuesdays-Saturdays, noon-5 p.m.; Sundays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Free. (310) 440-4500.

* “The September 11 Photo Project” (June 30-Aug. 4) at Armory Northwest, 965 N. Fair Oaks Blvd., Pasadena. Tuesdays-Sundays, noon-5 p.m. Free. (626) 792-5101.

* “Reactions” (July 13-Aug. 25). Williamson Gallery, Art Center College of Design, 1700 Lida St., Pasadena. Tuesdays-Sundays, noon to 5 p.m., except Thursdays, noon-9 p.m. Free. (626) 396-2200.

There will be joint open houses at Armory Northwest and the Williamson Gallery on July 13, with a panel discussion on “Art and Social Impact” at Art Center’s Los Angeles Times Media Center at 4 p.m. A shuttle between the two sites will run from 6 to 9 p.m.