These Colors Don't Run
22 images Created 31 Oct 2008
"THESE COLORS DON'T RUN"
Pictures and notes
from 'America's New War'.
A road journey of motifs and icons shot days after the chaos of 9/11, this essay is an extract of my experiences from New York and also Washington and Pennsylvania.
According to the US networks, September 11th was the start of a New (holy) War. Questions outweighed answers but to help explain, the stream of militarist rhetoric from TV and radio helped a superpower come to terms with a fear and bewilderment, not seen since Pearl Harbour.
In New York, Washington DC and the neighbouring states of Maryland and Pennsylvania, even liberal citizens urgently displayed star spangled banners and displayed a call-to-arms as this was after all, the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
In times of extreme patriotic hysteria, I found a nation in the grip of confusion and paranoia, illustrated by news headlines and slogans. With a landscape dominated by patriotic iconography and Christian motifs, I felt compelled to merge it with contemporary, wartime messages. 'These Colors Don't Run' comes from a T-shirt slogan designed in Miami that very September afternoon and sold within days on Broadway for $10.
Arriving in New York on Day 4 of what CNN called 'America's New War,' I began photographing in a city that had been traumatised by so many missing persons and angered by the desecration of its sacred skyline.
The Big Apple had been shaken to its core and my story therefore describes - using metaphor and icon - how New Yorkers and their fellow-Americans reacted emotionally to the attack on not just the famous 'twin towers,' but also on its lifestyle. America's way of life had been threatened: The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave could do no more than don gas masks, cower behind the camouflage of the National Guard and plaster their Star Spangled Banners from every street corner.
Pictures and notes
from 'America's New War'.
A road journey of motifs and icons shot days after the chaos of 9/11, this essay is an extract of my experiences from New York and also Washington and Pennsylvania.
According to the US networks, September 11th was the start of a New (holy) War. Questions outweighed answers but to help explain, the stream of militarist rhetoric from TV and radio helped a superpower come to terms with a fear and bewilderment, not seen since Pearl Harbour.
In New York, Washington DC and the neighbouring states of Maryland and Pennsylvania, even liberal citizens urgently displayed star spangled banners and displayed a call-to-arms as this was after all, the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
In times of extreme patriotic hysteria, I found a nation in the grip of confusion and paranoia, illustrated by news headlines and slogans. With a landscape dominated by patriotic iconography and Christian motifs, I felt compelled to merge it with contemporary, wartime messages. 'These Colors Don't Run' comes from a T-shirt slogan designed in Miami that very September afternoon and sold within days on Broadway for $10.
Arriving in New York on Day 4 of what CNN called 'America's New War,' I began photographing in a city that had been traumatised by so many missing persons and angered by the desecration of its sacred skyline.
The Big Apple had been shaken to its core and my story therefore describes - using metaphor and icon - how New Yorkers and their fellow-Americans reacted emotionally to the attack on not just the famous 'twin towers,' but also on its lifestyle. America's way of life had been threatened: The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave could do no more than don gas masks, cower behind the camouflage of the National Guard and plaster their Star Spangled Banners from every street corner.