Gilles Peress’s September 11 Photography Remembered in the New Yorker

For the New Yorker, Philip Gourevich remembers a photo taken by Bard Distinguished Visiting Professor of Human Rights and Photography Gilles Peress on September 11, 2001. Gourevich and Peress were colleagues at the time, and Peress’s photography ran in the New Yorker’s September 2001 issue. Gourevich describes the photo, which shows two firefighters standing on a destroyed street, as “the last survivors of a lost time” recorded only by Peress. “Rather than making you see, Gilles lets you see—admitting you, with each click of the shutter, to join him as he enters into an immediate and transparent intimacy with lives lived in the teeth of history.”

Post Date: 09-17-2025