Station 3: Close Reading

The famous image of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York by Magnum photographer Thomas Hoepker was not published until five years after the event. Why? Following the conventions of classical landscape painting, the work’s foreground centres on a group of people. These individuals are not however concerned with what’s going on in the background, instead their attention focuses on their own interaction. A closer look reveals other unsettling elements present in the image: the Mediterranean plants, the bicycle, the remnants of a wharf, the sunglasses...

This is where the images from the interactive image catalogue in the research cabinet come into play – from iconic shots of catastrophes, historic landscapes and harbour scenes, through to depictions of modern subjectivity and technology – these visual renderings serve a catalyst to construct associations on a multiplicity of levels. Pull out the drawers and explore the kaleidoscope of references to expose the ambiguities of the original image.