Synopses & Reviews
Watching the World Change is a gripping visual chronicle of Americas darkest week, in which the stories behind the most striking images of the towers fall and its aftermath reveal the nature of our image-saturated society.
The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center was the most universally observed event in human historywith several billion people seeing the two towers burn and fall on television and the Internet and then in newspapers and magazines. That the event was so visual is owing to the people who, facing disaster, were compelled to take photographs of it: imperiled office workers carrying point-and-shoot cameras; horrified tourists; professional photographers risking their lives; traumatized family members; government officials charged with recording the devastation and identifying the dead. Conceived by Osama Bin Laden as a diabolical visual eventthe toppling of an image of America right before the worlds eyesthe destruction of the Twin Towers swiftly came to be defined by photography, as families posted snapshots of their loved ones, police sought terrorists faces on security-camera videotapes, and the Bush administration devised images of presidential heroism to counter the chaotic initial moments after the attack.
In Watching the World Change, David Friend tells the stories behind forty of the photographs that altered our sense of our world foreverfrom the happenstance shots taken by bystanders in the moments after the first tower was struck to the scene of three firefighters raising the Stars and Stripes at the site that evening, which has become a ubiquitous image of American resilience. He tells unforgettable stories of photographers and rescuers, victims and survivors. He shows how breakneck advances in television, digital photography, and the Internet produced an effect whereby the whole world was watching the terrible events at the same time. He explores the controversy about whether images of 9/11 are redemptive or exploitative; and he shows how photographs, and the human images at the center of them, help us to witness, to grieve, and finally to understand the unimaginable.
Review
“A lucid, thoughtful, and wide-ranging book…David Friends excellent writing conveys more of the truth of the day than photographs can.” —Garrison Keillor, The New York Times Book Review
“As I read Watching The World Change, my pulse began to quicken. This is an intricately woven tale of that terrible day, and terrible week, that is both gripping and thought-provoking. The images, of course, are seared in our consciousness, but after reading this book you will look at them in a whole new way. Much has been written about 9/11, but David Friend shows it to us as no one has before.” —Anderson Cooper
“Compelling…Surely the most original treatment so far of the cultural impact of the day.” —Frank Rich, The New York Times“The crystalline images of September 11 soon became blurred, either by hysteria or exploitation or by a certain reticence that mutated into near-denial. At last we have a book that looks steadily through the lens and does not flinch, but which cancels voyeurism by its care and measure and by the multiplicity of its perspectives.”—Christopher Hitchens
“Riveting…wide-ranging and stimulating.”—Chicago Tribune
“Friend is always a profoundly empathetic writer, which is a tribute to his sense of proportion—and to his essential humanity.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“A reader can only bear witness to the tenderness and wisdom at the core of this book, which distinguish it throughout. David Friend's passionate sympathy engages the reader without relenting. Just about all the observations that might be sought from the events of that day are here: victims, survivors in every sense, responders. Loss, pride, a helix of sorrow and shame along the meridians of the world. Along with its records of grief, Watching the World Change celebrates the courage to go on, which may be the most admirable and irreplaceable of human virtues.”—Robert Stone
Synopsis
The attack on the World Trade Center was the most watched event in human history. And the footage recorded that day came from myriad perspectives—from TV cameras and tourist snapshots to photographer Thomas E. Franklins iconic image of three firefighters raising the American flag at Ground Zero. David Friend explains how that week marked a phase change in the digital age, a moment when all the advances in television, photography, and the Web converged on a single event. A brilliant chronicle of how we process disaster, Watching the World Change is “an elegant and moving examination of the photographic legacy of that day in history….Brings meaning to a terrible time” (New Orleans Times-Picayune).
Includes the exclusive story of the French filmmaker brothers who chronicled the attacks and survived the collapse of the towers.
About the Author
David Friend,
Vanity Fair's editor of creative development, was the directory of photography for
Life magazine. He won an Emmy (with
Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter) for the documentary
9/11, about two French documentary makers drawn into the disaster. He lives in New Rochelle, New York.