Summary: The article speaks of how the lower district of Manhattan has recovered in various ways in the years after the September 11th attacks, such as neighborhoods in the area becoming wealthy destinations for businesses, while also tackling the issue of how the site was repurposed by the officials who owned the land; and how they negotiated with the estates of the victims to make sure the memory and respect was preserved.
Communication Problem:
The Manhattan of today is far different than the Manhattan of fifteen years ago. How does one reconcile the destruction of 9/11 with the reconstruction effort, and how does one show how business has returned to the area without forgetting the tragedy that came before.
Image Ideas: There will definitely be a visit to the 9/11 memorial site. Other historical sites nearby, as they are today, are also compelling possibilities.
Results: While the ideal of reconciling the past and present was applicable to the project, it was not so overt as to include the harshness of the attacks that brought down the Twin Towers. There was an emphasis on showing how lower Manhattan has changed utterly to being a place of living in the wake of disasters, of families going about their days and people going about the city with their pets.
The article really emphasized that the residential population of Lower Manhattan has tripled since 9/11. You don’t mention that at all. And then, in the results section, I am looking for you to make specific comments on what you produced.
You took that wonderful photo of the boy with the pretzel but chose instead to use an awkwardly cropped image of the Freedom Tower for your opener. While there was a good deal in the article about that building, the cropping makes the building look unsteady, a connotation I think best avoided. the boy with the pretzel works so well with the idea of the area becoming a lot more residential and the pretzel is iconic of NYC.