bjbjLULU RAY SUAREZ: Finally tonight, a story produced by our online team for our website
as part of our 9/11 anniversary coverage. We think it's worth sharing with our broadcast
audience. JONATHAN HYMAN, photographer: My name is Jonathan Hyman. I am a documentary
photographer. I have spent the last 10 years, five years full-time, since -- starting with
the day of the attacks, documenting the vernacular response that people made through artwork
in response to the September 11th attacks. It was this kind of rare intersection that
Americans in the past haven't had much practice at. We haven't been subject to wars very often
on our own territory or attacks on our own territory. And I realized that there was this
very interesting intersection between people who wanted to express their private emotions,
but do it publicly. And so once I was realized what I was going to do, I made a conscious
choice early on to not come into New York right away. And I had it in my already from
watching the news and speaking to people that everybody with a camera was at ground zero.
So, I decided that what I would do was focus on what was happening 52, 200 miles outside
of New York. I was seeing all kinds of very interesting things appearing on the side of
the road and in public places right where I lived in Sullivan County, N.Y. It was very
important for me to show a broad range of expression and sentiment. There's a picture
that has a very aggressive missile in the shape of -- in the shape of -- it's an American
flag in the shape of a missile flying into Osama bin Laden's head. He's got horns. He's
clearly being depicted as the devil. So there's everything from that kind of very aggressive,
angry sentiment to other things that are more about healing, love and peace. And for me,
my goal was to simply say, this is what I saw. Here it is. There are many different
ways in which I came to take a picture. Sometimes, I would pick an area and drive around if I
suspected that that area would have murals or people with tattoos. I would go to fire
stations, police stations, ambulance buildings, American Legion halls, places where people
will have been -- would be likely to have either known about some kind of 9/11 response
in public or they might know someone who did. And so these kind of informal conversations
that I had led me to objects that I would have never found. The subject of this tattoo
is a deeply private person. I was able to convince him that my intentions were pretty
good. And, you know, we made an agreement, by the way -- no pictures of his face. He
didn't want his picture taken from the front. And I honored that. And, in the end, he honored
me back, and we ended up having a very good relationship. And, in fact, this picture on
the five-year anniversary went all over the world. Many people in this country looked
at the material in my collection, the photographs in my collection, and people saw red, white
and blue, and tended to think that either my collection represented some kind of nationalistic
expression, or other people thought that I was a great patriot because there was so much
red, white and blue, when, in fact, it's my contention that many of the people who made
this vernacular artwork that I have documented used what was available to them in their popular
culture. These are people who, for the most part, with the exception of some of the muralists
-- not all the muralists -- heretofore have not had a self-image as someone who can express
themselves in public, they have never really made art, and they don't believe that they
are artists or could ever be an artist. So they drew upon the things that they know.
That's what made this so interesting. That public expression of private, personal emotion
is really probably the most profound and distinguished element of what I think I saw. RAY SUAREZ:
Jonathan Hyman's photographs are on exhibit at the Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Gallery in Lower
Manhattan until October 8. h`=k h`=k h`=k h`=k gd`=k h`=k h`=k h`=k h`=k urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags
place urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags State RAY SUAREZ: Finally tonight: a story
produced by our online team for our website as part of our 9/11 anniversary coverage Normal
Microsoft Office Word RAY SUAREZ: Finally tonight: a story produced by our online team
for our website as part of our 9/11 anniversary coverage Title Microsoft Office Word Document
MSWordDoc Word.Document.8