Those Who Come, Those Who Leave

I made these two photographs inside the 9/11 Memorial & Museum on September 5, 2015.

They were made from opposite directions along the same passage.

In one photograph, the people are moving away from me through an enormous space of concrete, light, and shadow.

In the other, the people are coming toward me.

When placed together, the photographs show something I remember noticing while I was there: people continually arriving and people continually leaving.

We did not know one another.

We had different lives and different reasons for being there.

But for a period of time, we were sharing the same place and, in some way, the same purpose.

I chose not to use a flash.

I did not want the camera to interrupt the atmosphere or draw attention to itself.

There was a quietness about being there that I wanted to respect.

So I worked with the light that already existed.

The result was not technically perfect.

There is movement in the people. There are deep shadows. There are areas where the escalator lighting becomes extremely bright.

But those things are also part of how I remember the place.

People moving.

Architecture remaining.

Light guiding us through it.

One photograph looks in one direction.

The other looks back.

Together they became Those Who Come, Those Who Leave.

Those Who Come, Those Who Leave is a two-panel photographic work created inside the National September 11 Memorial & Museum on September 5, 2015.

The diptych presents opposing views along the museum's escalator passage.

In the left panel, monumental concrete surfaces dominate the frame. Illuminated escalator rails converge toward a small group of visitors moving away from the photographer.

In the right panel, the relationship reverses. Visitors approach the camera and occupy much more of the frame, while the architecture becomes a containing structure around them.

A warm amber light near the distant vanishing point appears in both photographs, creating a visual connection between the two panels.

The work does not attempt to identify the thoughts or emotions of individual visitors.

Instead, it observes a continuous human movement through a site of collective memory.

The photographer's decision to work without flash was deliberate. Available light preserved the atmosphere of the memorial and allowed the act of photography to remain as unobtrusive as possible.

Presented together, the two photographs transform ordinary movement through the building into a study of arrival, departure, architecture, and shared purpose.

People come here for different reasons.

To learn.

To understand.

To share.

To mourn.

To remember.

To pay tribute.

And eventually, everyone leaves.

That may be one of the things that makes a memorial different from the people who visit it.

We pass through.

The place remains.

I am not a religious person, yet there is something about the 9/11 Memorial that feels almost holy to me.

Not holy in the religious sense.

There is a peacefulness there that comes from knowing the importance of the ground beneath you.

The stones are still there.

The physical remains of what happened have not simply disappeared because new structures now surround them.

History is present.

People arrive as strangers, yet for a period of time there is a kind of shared purpose.

We may never speak to one another.

We may never know why the person beside us came.

But for that moment we occupy the same place.

Then we move on.

Someone else arrives.

Those who come.

Those who leave.

And the memorial remains.

Preserved as the forty-third accessioned work in the Francisco Colón Studio Photography Wing, Those Who Come, Those Who Leave is a photographic diptych created at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City on September 5, 2015.

The work consists of two opposing views of an interior escalator passage.

The left panel emphasizes monumental architecture and visitors moving away from the photographer.

The right panel reverses the direction of observation, allowing approaching visitors to occupy the foreground while the same architectural language continues around them.

The photographs are joined by repeated visual elements: converging escalator rails, massive concrete surfaces, available light, and a warm illuminated point within the distance.

Colón photographed without flash in order to avoid disturbing the atmosphere of the memorial.

The resulting deep shadows, luminous escalator surfaces, and slight motion within the human figures are retained as part of the documentary character of the work.

The diptych is preserved as a single accession while the two original source photographs remain independently maintained within the Francisco Colón Studio archive.

Within the Cities collection, Those Who Come, Those Who Leave considers a memorial not only as architecture, but as a place continuously occupied by people who arrive, experience, remember, and eventually depart.