Took another trip up to the Top of the Rock earlier this evening, on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11. At dusk they switched on the ‘Tribute in Light’ – two massive beams of light in remembrance of September 11. It’s actually an art installation of 88 huge searchlights. Originally placed in the footprints of the two towers, they have now been moved to a rooftop close to the original site…
The installation has been repeated every year since, and the huge beams of light are visibile for up to 60 miles around. In the picture above, the Empire State Building is also visible – lit with red, white and blue.
The photo above was taken earlier on in the evening immediately after the tribute was switched on. At that point, the Empire State Building hadn’t yet switched on its lights. Both images were taken with a Tilt Shift lens – which is how the focus is kept on the Tribute and the Empire State Building, while blurring the surroundings.
I think that the building under construction to the right of the beams of light is the new WTC 1 building, and the smaller new construction visible to the left is WTC 4, from what I can tell.
On the way home, we walked past Bryant Park, which had its own memorial. 2,753 empty chairs sitting on the lawn. One for every victim of the September 11th attacks. There were quite a few people even at 10pm sitting and standing around the edge of the lawn – seeing the sheer quantity of chairs, and the amount of space that they took up really brought home the scale of loss.
It was actually this Bryant Park Memorial that moved me the most – it didn’t cost anything – only the time that it took to make sure that there were 2,753 chairs, and that each one was carefully placed – facing south, to the site of the fallen towers.
