Bill Biggart was a photographer killed by the falling northern tower of the World Trade Center on September 11th 2001. He took his last picture at 10:28:24AM . This one as well as the other photographs he took just before his death can now be seen in a very intimate little exhibition at the International Center of Photography (1133 6th Avenue at 43rd Street.) One wall of the little room is devoted to Bill Biggart’s work before September 11th. His work shows that he was not afraid of the closeness of charged situations. He brought his lens into the eye of conflict, his portraits of human drama were taken at a very close distance.
The Photographs on the remaining walls are organized by the time stamps burned into the digital exposures of his Canon.
The actual camera, or what remains of it (he had two with him, one with slide film, one digital), as well as a notebook, a bag, a cellphone, his press passes and a pair of glasses are displayed in a vitrine in the center of the room. The gray dust which is said to be concrete is still sticking to them. The pages in the completely corroded spiral notebook are now dry, but must have been drenched with water. The glasses were not cleaned and have little brownish-greenish marks on them.
The little gallery does not feel like a shrine. The images are oddly calm, their arrangement narrative. The objects seem to be reminders that life continues, not that it ends.
If you can not visit the exhibition at the ICP, you might want to visit Bill Biggart's Final Exposures, an article (by Dirck Halstead) and online Gallery at TheDigitalJournalist.org. The images in this post were borrowed from TheDigitalJournalist.org.