BEAUTIFUL MEMORIALS
Memory is a curious thing. It helps us and haunts us. It comforts us and pains us. Some things we work hard to remember, and some we try our best to forget. We use constructs, like photographs, memoirs, and memorials, to keep memories alive and strong, and to experience memory collectively.
In our quest to find beautiful expressions of memory and memorials happening right now, we have searched and found some that have amazed and moved us.
Photojournalist, Jonathan Hyman, has spent more than a decade documenting the artistic expressions of memory of the 9/11 tragedy in more than 20,000 photographs which have been exhibited in libraries and museums around the world. “Ground Zero Memorial Bus” (2006), is one of a sampling of these photographs published in his forthcoming book, “The Landscapes of 9/11: A Photographer's Journey
Hyman is Associate Director for Conflict and Visual Culture initiatives at the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College. His interest in vernacular art, related, in particular to common struggles and collective angst, is focused here on the paintings, drawings, sculptures, and other media that everyday people were moved to create, using walls, trees, vehicles, tombstones, and even flesh, to remind themselves and all of us of the monumental enduring pain and loss caused by the 9/11 bombings.
Tattoos are memorials, using real live bodies instead of bronze or stone likenesses, to remind the person who sports them, along with everyone around in close view. Hyman’s photo, “T.C.’s Back” (2003), shows a New York City fireman, T.C., offering his entire back as a canvas, displaying the twin towers as they burn, along with the names of the dear ones he lost.
A Muslim woman, in a bright headscarf, walks past a street mural, painted by community artists in the Bronx, NY. Her form arches as she steps, mirroring the curves of the buildings as they buckle and fall behind her. We can’t help but wonder what she sees and what she is thinking and she carries on her way. Memories of horror juxataposed with life moving on, in this one photograph, “Woman with Arched Back,” show the genius and sensitivity of Hyman’s eye. He manages to create beauty out of memories that are not so beautiful, and he makes them beautiful for us now.
