Reliving Tragedy Through Photography

It was a Tuesday, the day before John Jonas Gruen’s 74th birthday. He awoke in his bedroom in Manhattan just before 9 a.m. to crisp September air and a ringing telephone. His daughter, Julia, was on the line, calling from her home just four blocks away on West 79th Street.

She sounded worried. Something was wrong.

“‘Turn on the TV,’ she said,” Mr. Gruen recalled, leaning back in an armchair at his Southampton summer rental (Mr. Gruen and his wife, Jane Wilson, own a home in Water Mill). “‘Something dreadful is happening.’”

What Mr. Gruen and his wife saw next they first assumed was a trailer to a horror film, not the unfolding of a series of terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. And nearly 10 years later, it is the haunting subject of Mr. Gruen’s photo exhibition, which will shown for the first time ever on Saturday, September 3, at Guild Hall in East Hampton.

“It’s important for us to remember,” said Chief Curator Christina Strassfield during a telephone interview last week.

Mr. Gruen said that September 11 is a day that he—and the rest of the world—won’t forget. Sitting in front of the television, he watched smoke billow from the North Tower of the World Trade Center, flames licking the entrance, where unconfirmed reports had said a commercial jet had crashed. Minutes later, a second plane hit the South Tower, a fiery explosion erupting from the 110-story skyscraper.

“Then we watched them both go down,” Mr. Gruen said. “My instinct was to rush down there and try and help and do something. I also had the instinct, because I’m a journalist, to pick up my camera and go down and take pictures.”

And that is just what he did. The subways weren’t traveling to Ground Zero, he recalled. Instead, Mr. Gruen took the train to 14th Street and hailed a cab to the Financial District. Then he walked.

There was tremendous dust and smoke, he said. Army National Guard soldiers patrolled the streets, rifles at the ready. Police officers, wearing masks and big goggles, stopped Mr. Gruen from crossing into the roped-off scene.

“Nobody could go near this center of horror. So I put on my best British accent and said I was a reporter from the BBC, no less,” he said. “And they said, ‘Where is your identification?’ ‘Oh, I left it in my hotel room.’ And they said, ‘Move on sir.’ It was a good attempt.”

So Mr. Gruen joined the hundreds of spectators, who were gawking and snapping pictures. There in front of them were the remains of the two towers—beloved landmarks along the New York City skyline reduced to shards of twisted metal.

He was too stunned to cry.

“We very quickly learned that about 3,000 people had lost their lives in those two buildings,” he recalled. “It happened to be the most beautiful day. Sunshine. Clarity. And to have something like that happen to people who were simply pursuing their lives, what must they have thought? And some of them were so desperate that they jumped. There are news reels that I think showed that, but I wouldn’t look at it. It’s just unbearable.”

Over the next three days—including his birthday on September 12, Mr. Gruen would take 100 photographs with his Nikon N50. Ms. Strassfield narrowed the original 100 film images down to 24 for the exhibit, which will be held in the Boots Lamb Education Center.

The curator had been thinking about holding a September 11 memorial show for some time, she said, adding that, after all, everyone remembers where they were. She recalled that she was en route to a car service station in Quogue to get her oil changed with her young twins, Peter and Joseph, in the back seat listening to children’s music on the radio.

“When I walked in, everyone is standing there, looking at the television set,” she said. “So I looked up and they were showing it again, the first plane. So I put the kids in the playroom area, came back and asked, ‘What happened?’ And as I said that, the second plane went down.”

Looking through Mr. Gruen’s photographs brought her back to that day, Ms. Strassfield said. She selected those images she found most powerful, like the one of a makeshift “praying station” in Central Park.

“I had never heard of that and I had never seen a picture of a praying station like that,” she said. “It was very telling.”

Mr. Gruen, who was born in France and raised in Italy, said he does not consider himself to be a political, religious or patriotic man. But he witnessed phenomenons in each, he said, namely New Yorkers—of all affiliations and creeds—uniting and getting out their American flags.

“The world took note of the Twin Towers tragedy, and it changed people,” he said. “We were all changed. Naturally, this sort of thing should bring people together, and it does. That’s something I experienced, as well.”

By the very next day after the tragedy, endless flowers and hundreds of memorials, photographs and candles dominated parks, sidewalks, and firehouses, Mr. Gruen said. “Missing” posters covered Manhattan, he said.

“They said, ‘We’re looking for my daddy. He’s 5-foot-8. He’s got blue eyes and a little moustache. If you know his whereabouts, please contact’ and then the phone number,” he said. “Or ‘My daughter is missing. Her name is Louise. She is blonde. We can’t find her.’ There was even a poster for a little dog that was missing.”

The photographer captured it all, though not frivolously since he was not using a digital camera, he noted. He put thought into each photo, he said, careful not to waste any film.

“No one has ever seen these photos in 10 years. They’ve been sitting in a box,” Mr. Gruen said. “I felt that it’s time. I know there are photographers who were allowed greater access than I and took some wonderful photographs. But whatever I took, I felt. Even though it’s not the last word on what happened on 9/11, they are a sampling of what occurred.”

“Twin Towers Tragedy Exhibition” by John Jonas Gruen will open with a reception on Saturday, September 3, from 4 to 6 p.m. at Guild Hall in East Hampton. The photographer will give a speech at 5 p.m., recounting his experiences from September 11, 2001. The show will remain open through October 9. Suggested admission is $7, or free for members. For more information, visit guildhall.org.