Matt Peters
map006@marietta.edu
Sept. 11 marked the solemn fifteenth anniversary of the suicide attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon buildings. In commemoration of this tragic day, Marietta College has on display Remembering September 11, 2001, a series of images documenting the events of that day.
The exhibit opened to the public on Thursday Sept. 8 with a commentary presented by Mike Tager, Professor of Political Science. It will remain open through Sunday Sept. 25. Located in Hermann Fine Arts Center’s third-floor gallery, the heart wrenching collection of 200 photos encapsulates many aspects of the nightmarish catastrophe.
“When I first walked in, my first words were, ‘this is so much’,” junior Rosey Raths said.
Raths recalled experiencing the event as a child. She and her family had just moved to New Jersey a week prior to the attacks.
“We didn’t have TV for a week, and we didn’t really know what was going on where I came from,” she explained.
At the time, Raths says she did not fully grasp the weight of the situation. Today however, she is acutely aware of the event’s significance.
“I think since 9/11, we’ve been moving to become a lot more nationalistic and ethnocentric,” she said. “There’s a lot of pride in being an American that stems from 9/11, but there’s also a lot of negatives.”
Raths says that a lot of xenophobia still lingers from that day, an issue that has resurfaced distinctly in today’s political realm.
For some students, the day is remembered very clearly, others have no personal recollection of Sept. 11, 2001. Many freshmen were only three years old when the attacks occurred.
Associate Professor of Art, Sara Alway-Rosenstock, says she was a college student living in New York City on the day the attacks occurred. She commented on her experience with the exhibit.
“It’s an intense show. It took me five tries to get through it,” she said. “Photographs like that, they just expose so much emotion.”
Alway-Rosenstock, co-curator of the gallery, says the events were very difficult for her to relive. She explained that the photos are displayed in the gallery in the same way they were displayed at ground zero, clipped to strings hanging freely.
“I know other colleagues have had similar experiences,” Alway-Rosenstock said. “Just trying to walk into the gallery and see the photos, it kind-of opens up a bottle of emotions we try to keep capped most of the time.”
Organization of the exhibit was a collaborative effort between several professors and the college alumni association. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and from 1:00-5:00 p.m. on weekends.
