Meeting people in NY

Meeting new people is always a fun activity, random people everywhere, and then there are so many not random people in some places.

This is probably the best activity in a City like New York City, where we collide with different being all the time, you are in constant movement and it is always good to take a breath and chat with someone. Whether it is a quick q&a, a medium chit chat talk about the moon, the weather, the place, or a long conversation about you and me, you can always meet new people, some will play a really small part in your journey and others will mark your life, but the thing is we are always in constant interaction.

Where am I going with this, you may be asking yourself and so here goes an anecdote.

 As a member of NPPA I receive information of workshops, guest speakers and other activities related to my profession, they are usually around the USA on places far from where I am or at dates that conflict with other projects, so when I first heard of  “Witness to Tragedy and Recovery” exhibit and symposium I was a little worried it would be one of those times, but fortunately enough for me, it was in NYC, and I would be there without prior-engagements.


It was a truly amazing experience to hear the panelists and after the short q&a, we had the opportunity to talk to some of them.

My first approach was to Todd Maisel who said that after his experience during 9/11 he won't let anything stand in his way for a photograph.

A missed approach was to Aaron Brown, he left quite quickly and I didn't get the chance to talk to him, but hearing him was incredible,  he said “You are not doing a story, you are making history.”

We met some more of the panelists and guests.

One of my friends had previously approached Joe Woolhead and he had invited him and us to the 7WTC to see from above the reconstruction and the memorial. I approached him because he said something that struck me, he said that at some point he just couldn't go back, so he stopped, it was too much. And that got to me, because as much as we can protect ourselves through our cameras, we can only do it for so much until it hits us. And talking to him he  reiterate his invitation. So we got to go 2 times, one during the morning and one during the night, it was truly something the view from NY, and from the site, it was mesmerizing.

Here, have a look:

Faces of the 10th anniversary of 9/11

We grab our equipment, a coffee, a bagel, and off we go. We got to the closest subway station and it was as my friend Hannah Jamille Andersen puts it “a ghost town”, very few people and subways were running slow, it could be due to the 10^th anniversary or that it was Sunday at 7:30 am.

We took the first subway and then we transferred, as we approached the site, there were more people. By the time we got out the subway and to the City it was 9:02am, same time a second plane hit the south tower ten years ago. There was dead silence everywhere, the police froze all the streets surrounding the 9/11-memorial site for the day, and you couldn’t get close. But there were people around, visual journalists, firefighters, policemen and people from around the world, to show respect for the victims. There were some stations with big screens were you could see the ceremony, and you could hear the names, one after the other.

These are some of the faces that we saw:

Every person we encounter was friendly and contemplative. We had a good remembrance day.

New York

As some of you may already know I am in NY City, to make a documentary about the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
I'll be here all this month and you'll be able to see some of my work here. Mostly I'll be shooting video, so you'll have to wait for it to be done, but I'll take stills so you can see what I am seeing.
It has been an amazing trip so far, we've gone around and met different people.

Yesterday we were around ground zero when an art collector named Ron Jagger, invited us to see above the memorial of ground zero from his apartment, in the surrounding area. So the 3 of us, plus British media and Spanish media went up and this is what I saw.