[Music] it just must have been like surreal you know it was it was uh it tore everybody's heart out and as a photographer you know what what could I do you know that just kind of kept pinging around in my head how could I make a contribution I'm not a cop I'm not a firefighter but I felt this had happened to my own Community my my muse my center of my photographic energy in New York City and I had to get involved on some level so I can kind of start a little bit at the beginning here so so uh you know the this is the Empire State Building that's my friend Tom silan and I've done a lot of climbing in New York so just harking back to history uh my own personal history that's the antenna on the North Tower years ago uh and I was very competitive young photographer at the time and there was uh an opportunity I had and there was a photographer I was sort of semi-competing with at the time and I wanted to get up that Tower and I climbed it I remember one of the guy's nicknames uh he was he was called Johnny the Spiderman and it was back in the day we went up with just minimal safety belts and and that is that picture is made with a fishey lens from very near the very top of the antenna on the North Tower so um you go forward and so why am I showing you a picture of Mike Piaza uh he was the catcher of the New York Mets at the time and you can see the plume in the in the way back there and the in the blue sky that's the the dust cloud still Rising Sports Illustrated assigned me to photograph Piaza and I you know we brought him to the top of a roof which was not easy to do after 9/11 to find a rooftop in New York City but uh he was one of those athletes who was stepping forward and trying to help people heal and and to inspire people but I looked at this picture and I thought this can't be the only cont I have with this you know uh this event you know so uh why am i showing you a picture of ballerina um I had one experience with the world's only giant Polaroid camera prior to 911 and as a test for myself I wanted to shoot with it I asked Jenny who was a prima ballerina uh in in New York City and she came down with the costume people Etc and were from City Ballet and she posed for me just wonderful beautiful openhearted talented lady and I photographed seven giant Polaroids of her in one day and I felt I had sort of an affinity for this machine this monster machine that I was using it's the size of a onecar garage there's two Technics inside of it while I'm working um outside of it there is no way to focus the lens you have to focus your subject you have to work camera obscura so what I did was I borided a 2 and a qu camera underneath the lens of the giant Polaroid wired my strobe system into that um it was a mamia RZ and I used the RZ to trigger the strobe system so I'd get a simultaneous dupe I'd get a two and a quarter image and I'd get an identical polaroid so moving forward uh we all I had um to show people to talk to people and see if they would come by this camera because it's a physical installation it doesn't move around you can't bring the camera to some one they have to come to it I went down to the great drone Street Firehouse which was just a few blocks from where the camera used to be located down in the bowy district of New York and all I had was a giant Polaroid and when I say giant Polaroid I'm talking about a positive print that's 40 in by 80 in yeah so it's life size life size and I rolled out this picture of a ballerina on the firehouse floor now this was a company that had lost quite a number of men I believe they lost 10 or 11 men MH and they gathered around they looked down at this you could predict the comments you know why you're showing us you know a lady and a tutu Etc but a couple hours later there was a wrap of a Halligan on the steel door of the studio and they had rolled the truck around and the first firefighter who stepped in front of the camera was John basari and it started from there word spread and people started coming by cuz they had this grape vine there this nutty guy with this giant giant camera that was making these enormous prints and a lot of money any any money it could possibly generate was going to go to charity yeah so uh so these are among my favorites uh Lou cioli is on the right you know um Billy Ryan and Mike morsey in the middle and Harry Davis from Squad 18 Harry just did that by the way you know I let people do and be who they were so Harry just went up in front of the camera and he cradled his ax like a baby and I said nothing to him right you know um Yannis dempire um window washer that I have a I have a squeegee blade he autographed for me on my wall in my studio that particular squeegee blade is in the Smithsonian he was trapped inside of an elevator and uh with three or four other people and they PRI the doors open and were confronted with a wall of sheetrock M and they scraped their way through the sheetrock with the um and the squeegee blade and saved everybody in that elevator car Jason cascone his very first day of work uh was as a probationary firefighter was 911 he was given last rights and put on a bus and sent to the to the pit you know Joe hajes retired now very dear man very solid firefighter a lot of firefighters retired after 911 um Joe didn't he he just he told me he said look it's not the time for for us to retire we got to stick on the job and show the young guys the way father Jordan who I call him the cursing priest um he just gave me so much grief um Juan alomi a paramedic I'll keep moving here you know I know as best those workers and you know um that was I mean yeah that was the thing about it it was such a tragic thing but out of that tragedy like everybody rallied around to to help the community that sprad up around support for these First Responders and what people could do how they um they brought food they they they set up stations for sleep it was um it was a galvanizing effort on the part of um the entire city and and other people too people flooded into the city who just wanted to help yeah this project became a book it became a traveling show and it helped raise close to $2 million for the relief after which was donated to the rehabilitation of downtown public education in New York and it was a difficult stressful time but there were good things that did that did come out of it and the pictures did help they they offered a bridge to people who wanted their story told yeah and that was um an emotionally powerful thing to to offer them in the way uh you know you think photographs oh you know everybody's got an iPhone it's click click click but photographs really mean a lot and they become part of someone's life their soul their memory and to the small degree that this project helped participate in that in some measure of healing I'm happy that it did um so and I thought well if I didn't you know if I didn't kind of know what I was doing with a camera I couldn't have done this project yeah I mean that and that's really where this comes full circle here CU like we wouldn't have this if you didn't have that foundational knowledge of Photography exactly I mean it's not just technical skills it is it is partially that but it's also all of a piece it plays into your confidence as a photographer that you know you can do this I walked in to the head of Time Warner one of the top bosses and he was a old Georgia newspaper man smart as a whip and uh he's the kind of guy I look at you sideways let you Babble and then give you an answer yeah and I I just looked at him and said I I need $100,000 and he kind of let me talk and he gave it to me right there on the spot with the caveat as I was walking out of his office he looked at me goes Joe he goes you spend $25,000 I'm doing a very bad southern accent here he had this beautiful Southern draw and uh that's okay goes but you spend $100,000 and get me no pitches we got a problem and so the pressure was on yeah because when you walk into that studio it's $2,000 a day and 300 bucks a shot so you can burn through money like crazy you know you do you know 10 shots that's $33,000 right there boom I had crew you know uh minimal crew but we had crew and you can just really really kind of you know it's a nailbiter when you're looking at the budget they finally gave me an extra uh 25,000 at the very end of the project we had rund dry and they gave me a little extra money to sort of finish it off and bring it home if you will yep so so that was uh part of the thinking that played into the confidence I had to display to get this done even though I was basically staring at the ceiling at night and not in my own home um when we moved into the camera I didn't go further than two or three blocks from the camera for the entire time that we were there which was about 3 weeks uh in the in the very near history right after 9/11 because there was a loft bed over the camera I slept there um and we told people like if you come we will photograph you you know 2: a.m. 3:00 a.m. we had Cruise 8:00 a.m. midnight you know people were coming from the pit and it's like hey is this where you're taking the pictures yeah