James Nachtwey and 9/11 seen in 2001 and in 2011

 

General Photography

There’s an in-depth post at BagNews about how the photographs James Nachtwey shot on 9/11/2011 started looking quite different eleven years later. The cultural critic in me finds it very interesting how the 2011 versions actually resemble production stills from Hollywood movies. The photos are overly digitally processed. You’ll never see the world that sharp, with such contrast, and with such an overall blue tint - except when you go to the movies (or watch similar shows on TV). Maybe what we are seeing here is not just some digital post-processing completely out of control, but also the result of seeing almost each and every event on the big screen, re-imagined in some Hollywood form: Our thought of “It almost did not look real” is turned into a reality: It literally does not look real any longer.