Friday 11 September 2020

blick von williamsburg, brooklyn, auf manhattan, 11. september 2001

Captured by photojournalist Thomas Hรถpker with five people sunning, relaxing along the shore of the East River in the foreground while a cloud of smoke billows over the World Trade Center in the background—seemingly oblivious is not the callous portrayal that controversy after it was first shown to the public in 2005 as part of a retrospective of fifty of his works but is a chance juxtaposition caught at just the right moment.
View the whole frame here—respecting the artist’s rights and the fact that it again seems provocative without context. The composition has been compared to works like Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 1558 Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (that is actually a trope and the subject of several paintings at the time—not of Icarus’ actual crash but of the 1560s). Hรถpker was en route to Manhattan, having abandoned his car and proceeded on foot, continuing to take pictures.