Faces of Ground Zero

Faces of Ground Zero: A Photographic Tribute to America’s Heroes was a special traveling photo exhibition about the September 11 attacks. It was shown at several major cities in the United States, aiming to educate the public about the impact of modern urban terrorism. Faces of Ground Zero was one of the most widely seen exhibits about 9/11 and its aftermath.

The exhibit consisted of life-size photographs (9 ft x 4 ft framed images) of emergency workers, survivors, and relatives of victims of the attacks; some 272 people in all. (Some of the portraits included two or three subjects.) The aim was to capture the sense of loss, pain, and bravery of the time.

The exhibit was open to the public, free of charge, and seen by an estimated two million people. Shot by award-winning photographer Joe McNally, in the Moby C Studio, a few blocks from the "Ground Zero" World Trade Center site in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, with “Moby C”, the world’s largest one-of-a-kind instant camera.

Exhibitions

Throughout 2002, "Faces" appeared at Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, Boston Public Library in Boston, The Royal Exchange, London, Union Station in Chicago, One Market Plaza in San Francisco, and the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The exhibit returned to New York for the first anniversary of 9/11 and was shown at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan.

It was shown again on the fifth-anniversary of 9/11, when it appeared at the New York City Fire Museum in Lower Manhattan.

To mark the tenth-anniversary of 9/11, the Time Warner Center (10 Columbus Circle at 59th St.) presented an exhibition of more than 50 images from the collection. (That exhibition was known as JOE MCNALLY’S “FACES OF GROUND ZERO – 10 YEARS LATER.”)

Books

Many of the portraits of the FOGZ exhibit later appeared in the Life photobooks:

• One Nation: America Remembers September 11, 2001 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 2001)
• One Nation: America Remembers September 11, 2001, 10 Years Later (August, 2011) — Updated Expanded Edition
• Faces of Ground Zero: Portraits of the Heroes of September 11, 2001 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 2002) — Companion Photobook / Hardcover Edition
• Faces of Ground Zero: Portraits of the Heroes of September 11, 2001 (2002) — Abridged Softcover Edition with Alternate Cover
• In The Land Of The Free: September 11 – And After (New York: Time Inc., 2001) — Abridged Softcover Edition
• The American Spirit: Meeting the Challenge of September 11 (New York: Life Books Inc., 2002)

References

American Photo (magazine) (Special Issue: September 11) January-February 2002 p.56-7 & 90-1.