Remembering 9/11 In The Palm of Your Hand

“The Explore 9/11 app, which has already been downloaded 100,000 times, is a guided tour around the perimeter of the World Trade Center site, narrated by the people who lived through it all.

Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, the app is as different as could be from the grandiosity of most memorial projects. But that same reduced scale makes it feel much more personal, and therefore much more powerful. Instead of reading quotations inscribed in granite, you are listening as someone whispers them in your ear while you cradle the phone and strain to hear more.

Load a photo taken nine years ago on the exact spot where you are standing. Position yourself or your phone so you have the exact same perspective as the person who took the photograph did. Now, shift your eyes from despair to regrowth and back again, and think about how much can change in a decade, or a day.

It’s this effect — layering past over present, present over past — that makes Explore 9/11 such a good fit with the city it memorializes. In New York, nothing stays still but nothing entirely disappears…Allowing the city of grieving memory to coexist with the city of current growth, and placing them both within the palm of your hand, is a powerful way to focus a New Yorker’s attention — for a moment, until it’s gone again, lost in a rush of delirious amnesia.

via: NYTimes