A Very Strange Time Capsule

Joel Meyerowitz - whose photographs appear in the exhibition "After September 11: Images from Ground Zero" at the Museum of London -- says he took photos of New York in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks because he "wanted to do something useful".

"I had the same wounded feeling as everybody else", he says. He had tried to volunteer, but they turned him away, so he decided to document instead. He was horrified that photographers were being kept away from Ground Zero: "We can't have a blackout on history. What event is not photographed? I was determined to go in and make an archive." His photos -- of workmen taking out the dead, of the remaining North Wall -- are the only visual record of the recovery work at Ground Zero.

After Sept. 11, many New York cultural institutions felt the same urge -- to document and preserve. There is an ongoing attempt to collect all of the memories and material culture related to Sept. 11. From poems left by New Yorkers to aspirins sent for relief workers, from bits of rubble to "Missing" signs and dust masks...Sept. 11 is fast becoming one of the best-documented events in history.

But why are we collecting all this stuff? And what will it tell future historians about us?

Dr Sarah Henry, vice president at the Office of Programs at the Museum of the City of New York, told me in October 2001 that Sept. 11 "becomes an opportunity for a time capsule". By documenting the event and "looking at history from its every angle", there "may be an opportunity for people [in the future] to understand things about social, political and economic history in ways we cannot anticipate now".

A massive time capsule is a good way of describing the current collecting efforts by state and cultural institutions. Almost everybody seems to be collecting something. South Street Seaport Museum is documenting the response of the maritime community to the attacks, collecting oral histories, photographs, videos and other artefacts. The New York Center for Urban Folk Culture (Citylore) has photographed the spontaneous shrines that sprung up in response to the attacks, and is collecting "found" poems. The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art is collecting prints inspired by Sept. 11.

The New York Historical Society is collecting artists' responses to the attacks, World Trade Centre memorabilia, children's artwork, victim's personal effects, and equipment worn by rescue workers. The Museum of the City of New York has acquired Bellevue Hospital's "Wall of Prayer", a spontaneous bulletin board that sprung up in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, containing images of the lost, prayers and poems -- and it is creating a "Virtual Union Square", collecting electronic submissions of people's artistic or poetic responses to Sept. 11. And the Association of Public Historians of New York State is coordinating members' efforts to document their communities' responses to the attacks.

State agencies are also involved. A group led by New York State Archives and the National Archives is assembling evidence of how governments, hospitals, schools, mental health organisations and religious groups responded to the event. According to state archivist Kathleen Roe, "It's probably the most monumental documentation you can think of".

Columbia University Oral History Project is recording post-Sept. 11 "oral histories". Mary Marshall Clark, director of the Columbia University Oral History Research Office, told me that "we have never done anything on this scale. We have done this many interviews before [around 360], but we have never done this many this quickly, or so close to an event". The project will keep in touch with some of the interviewees over time, to see how the event has affected their lives.

Dr Steven Jaffe is curator at the South Street Seaport Museum in Manhattan, which has collected interviews with some of the people involved in the evacuation of around 300,000 people across the Hudson River by tugboat, yacht and speedboat after the attacks. According to Jaffe, "Everybody has felt a deep personal need to do something in response.... This is how I respond -- I can preserve for posterity, not only documents, but also how people felt about it".