By Angela Marshall
Law, technology director at a Brooklyn prep school, watched the World Trade Center towers burn and finally collapse through the lenses of his camera.
It was through those same lenses that he found hope again. In the days, weeks and months that followed, Law walked the streets of lower Manhattan looking for humanity in the ashes.
Law of Rockville Centre estimates he took between 3,000 and 5,000 photographs. The folders filled with contact sheets stacked on his dining room table suggest he is right.
The heart and soul of the collection are pictures of pictures. Law spent days photographing posters of the missing put up when hope still lived. Slowly, they were replaced with new signs bearing the same faces but now saying remember me.
For 15 years, Law worked as a commercial photographer in Manhattan, his office located across from the Armory used by families in the aftermath of the attacks to register their missing loved ones.
No matter that he now works in Brooklyn and lives on Long Island, this is Law's neighborhood. He watched the brick walls of the Armory he knew so well disappear behind the makeshift signs. And he cried.
About 100 of Law's photographs have been turned into a traveling exhibit called Words Fail, currently on display in Nashville, Tenn. and soon to open in Florida.
Law could not bring himself to frame the photos of the missing. Instead, he recreated the Armory's brick wall in order to display them in the same manner as they were taken.
When the traveling wall was finished, Law said its look of authenticity was very, very spooky.
The literature advertising the exhibit asks visitors to bring flowers, thoughts, prayers, poems and drawings to share. Many are laid at the bottom of the wall.
People still come in front of it and cry, Law said. They sob they're so moved.
He does not mistake this public display of grief for praise of his work. The usual responses like nice pictures are missing from the exhibit's comment book. They have been replaced with Thank you for sharing this with us.
Law believes this is the first time many people from outside New York are getting to see what happened in the city following the attacks because news coverage focused on Ground Zero.
Also in the exhibit are portraits of firefighters at the Trade Center site, New Yorkers at vigils, Americans flags flying proudly and much more.
The exhibit is not about the pain and suffering of 9/11. It's more about the seeds of hope, peace, compassion, tolerance and appreciation for family and loved ones. Those seeds germinated on 9/12, Law said.
The photographer also hopes the exhibit will help end some stereotypes about New Yorkers. New Yorkers are sometimes characterized as aggressive and full of themselves, but this was actually the exact reverse, he said. New Yorkers show themselves to be humbled, caring people. For me, at that instant, we collectively evolved to a higher level of human consciousness, and I saw in New Yorkers a capacity for peace, compassion, and tolerance. This was not a USA-all-the-way, kick butt, nuke em kind of thing happening in New York. It was horrible, horrible devastation you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.
The exhibit came about by accident when Law went to visit friends in Nashville last fall. The trip had been scheduled before the attacks and he brought some of his photographs to share with his friends. He also brought them on a visit to a gallery in which he had previously exhibited work. They called him a few months later and asked to display the collection.
Seeing how moved people were by the photographs, Law decided to take the exhibit on the road. Then he thought about the money involved. I realized that there was no way I could profit from this, he said.
Law looked at the charities that already exist but in the end decided to help his school, Berkeley Carroll, set up a Sept. 11 scholarship fund to provide full tuition to the child of a NYC police officer, firefighter, emergency service worker or to a child who lost a parent in the attacks.
Law's photographs have also appeared in the Herald. He called the paper the week of the attacks and asked if he could help. He photographed vigils, funerals and village life in the months that followed.
My first essence is as a photographer, he said. Even when doing corporate work, I was always a street photographer.
Law hasn't gone anywhere, even to the dentist, without his camera in the last 20 years. He carries it 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
With Sept. 11 just around the corner, Law reflected on how short one year is in a time of grieving. Over the summer, his cousin was invited to a barbecue in New Jersey. She was talking to a woman with a baby and asked where the father was. The woman started crying because he had died in the towers. That's the kick in the pants we live with everyday, Law said. You don't know when that ghost is going to turn up in your life again.
