David Campany - Safety in Numbnesss

‘Safety in Numbness: Some remarks on the problems of “Late Photography”’, first published in David Green ed., Where is the Photograph?, Photoworks/Photoforum, 2003.

(Author’s note: although it’s quite old now, I still see this essay cited frequently. Perhaps this is because the notion of photography as an ‘eclipsed’ or ‘secondary’ medium of traces, remnants and echoes now seems to be common currency. The book Where is the Photograph? is a fine collection of essays by, among others, Geoffrey Batchen, Peter Osborne, Laura Mulvey, Pavel Buchler, Olivier Richon and Richard Shiff. It is long out of print so I republish my essay here.)

This book shows an intense insight into the after math of the destruction of the world trade center, know commonly as 9/11. The book features photographs by photographer Joel Meyrowitz as he was the only photographer to be granted access to the scene and the clean up operation. When this disaster occurred Manhattan become the main photographic spot of photographers wanted to catch photographs of the clean up and after math of this man caused disaster, but as mentioned previously Joel Meyrowitz was the only photographer granted access to the actual scene and captured photographs other photographers would only dream about achieving. Alongside photographs he created a video recording of the after math as in his own words "I felt if there was no photographic record allowed, then it was history erased" . As due to the previous historical comflict of image manipulation, a recording reassured and shown the view the real life perspective of the disaster. During that time the photographs acheived by Joel Meyrowitz were so desired, whereas within the book it explains that due to other deconstructions within history that may follow, these photographs could possibly blend in alongside with them.