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The Happenings Feature - August/September 2006
Five Years by Mark D Phillips
It has been five years. It still feels like yesterday.
The tributes will bring back memories and thoughts we buried in the days following September 11, 2001. We don't want to remember them, but we must. As terrible as the
event was, it will always be there.
To those who lost loved ones, you are always in our thoughts. Those of us who watched this happen can only imagine what you feel.
As I photographed the attack and its aftermath, I tried to stay objective. Then I met Star Ortiz. She and her daughter, Rebecca, lost their husband and father, Paul Ortiz, Jr.
They had the world ahead of them. He was 21, working in IT for Bloomberg News, sent to Windows on the World to set up for a conference to be held later that day.
My wife, a columnist at the New York Post, met Star and her family as they feverishly searched for Paul at Ground Zero, the hospitals, anywhere that he might be. As the realization
sunk in that he would never come home, my wife shared their grief. We attended Rebecca's first birthday party with our daughter, just slightly older than Rebecca, and watched as the
children played together, knowing something was different, but enjoying each others fun at the party. Star was so strong. It touched all of our hearts.
During this same period, a photograph I took during the attack became a media sensation. The so called "Face in the Smoke" image was published worldwide, bringing media attention
like I had never seen. As a photojournalist, I had always been the deliverer of the story, never the subject of it. For the first time, I was asked to share my feelings of the attack
with radio, tv and newspaper viewers worldwide. It was a sobering experience. The more I talked, the better I felt. I tried my best to share the way New Yorkers pulled together, giving
support the likes of which none of us thought we were capable of doing.
The photograph brought forth email confessions to me. People shared their base emotions with me via email - their fear for the future, their religious views, and the occasional tirade
personally attacking me for bringing the photograph out to the media. It was an emotional period in history. It was a defining moment in my life.
In the five years since, we have seen much. Life continues. Ground Zero remains. Until the day that we have a new building and memorial on the site, we will all feel sad as we pass
the fence on the West Side that has enclosed the area for four years.
Star Ortiz left New York City to begin anew. My family will never forget Star and Rebecca. And with them, we will never forget Paul Ortiz, Jr. and the thousands who died with him.
Looming out of the fog was the largest ship Red Hook has seen moored to its shore.
The Queen Mary 2 arrived in the wee hours of the morning on April 15, 2006, for its inaugural stop at the new Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook. For the county of Kings, and particularly Red Hook, the terminal is the first step in a revitalization of the long-neglected waterfront.
I thought William Wegman was just about cutesy dogs. Then I saw William Wegman:Funney/Strange at The Brooklyn Museum running from March 10 through May 28, 2006.
Wegman is an experimenter who happens to use a funny looking dog as his main subject. His photographs are combinations of form and texture, shapes that capture the imagination. As Wegman says, "They are shadows and hues. They inspire me."
Nestled in the basement of the Park Slope Family Neighborhood Center on 14th Street off 4th Avenue is a hidden South Brooklyn jewel.
The Gallery Players, Brooklyn's premiere off-off Broadway theater, is marked by a sign set by a side door of the building leading to their 99-seat space.
Blink your eyes and something changes on Montague Street. Businesses close, open and change their locations at a dizzying pace.
As the price of South Brooklyn real estate keeps rising, Montague Street reflects the trend. The merger and acquisition of the Brooklyn real estate firms by larger Manhattan and nationally based firms, started by the arrival of Corcoran Real Estate on Montague Street, created a domino effect.
It's not very often that photographs of man's destruction of the environment can be called "beautiful." Or that one photographer will heap praise on the works of another photographer. But, such is the case with the new exhibit, Manufactured Landscapes: The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky, at the Brooklyn Museum of art.
The Sopranos took over Cobble Hill's Christ Church to film a wedding for the sixth season of the HBO series featuring the marriage of Mob boss Johnny "Sack" Sacramoni's daughter.
Engine 204 was cleaned out on Friday, May 30. The firehouse, which stood guard in the neighborhood for nearly 150 years, stands silent. It's long history will not be forgotten.
Visit our HAPPENINGS page to see more events taking place in South Brooklyn.
