[matthew]

The recent elections in the USA seemed more contentious, antagonistic, and chauvinistic than usual. One of the issues that shot to national importance during the run-up to the election was the May 2010 zoning approval by the city of New York of a Muslim community center on Park Place, a street near the World Trade Center site. Originally known as Cordoba House, now renamed to Park51, it was quickly labelled the "Ground Zero Mosque" by its opponents. It's been written up by the Associated Press, summarized with a timeline by Salon, and editorialized in The Economist - but the issue was framed and the tone was set by bloggers and Talk TV news programming. I have to admit that I find American politics somewhat befuddling at the best of times, but some of the vitriol around this issue was astounding.

So when I went to New York, I had to go see it for myself. If nothing else, that puts me into a vanishingly small percentage of those with an opinion who have ever actually been there, although I make no claims to understand or relate to the American political or cultural perspective.

The following photos are from the area immediately around the proposed community centre. Taking its name from the street address, Park51 is just a half-block down the street from the intersection of Park and West Broadway that's visible in the first photo; the building under construction on the corner is replacing another that was damaged in the September 11 attack. The other photos are from the surrounding streets in the Battery Park neighbourhood; the fourth image is looking across Park Place toward W. Broadway, with the Park51 location visible in the middle distance.

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The next three photos show the building that's eventually to be demolished. It was a former clothing store that was damaged in the attack on the World Trade Centre, and is currently being used as a prayer space for Muslims.

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Finally, these four photos are from the area immediately around the World Trade Center site, and show the construction and city around it. For a sense of location, the next photo shows the same construction cranes that are visible in the background of the first photo from this series.

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In the very end, I do find myself sharing some of the conflicting emotions of the issue. The community center organizers have an absolute right to build there. It is awfully close to what is still a very raw wound, both physically and psychologically. But I find myself looking forward another ten or twenty years, to a time when the reconstruction is complete and the centre is a thriving part of the community, and expect it will be transcendent - something to be proud of for everyone, if they choose to see it that way.

[Toad]

Great piece of photo journalism. I haven't really thought that much about the so-called Ground-Zero mosque. It seems like much ado about nothing to me - but I appreciate your well considered and thoughtful piece on the subject.

[matthew]

Thanks very much.

There's an objective writeup of some of the issues here:
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/08/questio...ro-mosque/
and after watching some of the political circus surrounding it, it was nice to find something that cuts through the toxicity of the "debate".

[Toad]

Tick...tock... we can do better for response to a major PJ piece than this, yes??

No wonder we don't see Zig around anymore...

[Wedding Shooter]

Matthew - it is great to hear your perspective and to "see it" through the images. Thanks for taking the time to bring this to us.

[Zig]

(..oh no ,au contraire...health been a bit under recently and have had musical stuff to get on top of....am not staying away purposefully...!)
Sensitively done. In fact, only after a few readings/viewings do I realise how skillfully you've removed your "self" from the picture..sort of more news than views, and a rare jewel nowadays. Mono is definitely the medium here...or is this just my retro eye? Great stuff.

[Irma]

I am not familiar with this Matthew, thanks for your writing and your pictures. I can see a difficult situation for many people and I hope the find a common ground where everyone accepts the neighboring ? of the other.

About your pictures I like them a lot. Knowing that you are now taking pictures with film as well, I am not sure if I should say I like your post processing or it was with BW film. In any case, I find really nice the bw treatment in this series.

Still as images, photographic Art they are great. I can think that I am reading just half of what they can tell to people directly involve.

[Zig]

I've just noticed the inclusion of firemen and such..and the light in the last 2 being quite as clean as the day the attack took place. Nice.

[matthew]

WS, thanks. This was the only photo series that I wanted to do while I was in New York, and am happy with how it came together.

Zig, this was a moderately tough set to put together. While I can't make any claim to being objective - I think the project should go ahead as planned, although the building sketches aren't to my taste - what I'm really thinking here is that both extremes of the arguments for and against are flawed. On one extreme, the group that's most likely to defend property rights and fight government regulation is wanting new rules to be created to stop someone from using their property as permitted; on the other side it's easy to find people who say that the property is "nowhere near" the World Trade Center site when the building in question is close enough to be damaged in the attack.

I don't really think that I'm entitled to an opinion. I can't relate to or understand the political and social climate; being somewhat left of the Canadian mainstream, American politics leaves me baffled. Yet I don't need to look very far to find examples of this kind of "not here" objections to mosques and other development where I live, and even though everything is much more polite, the sentiments and often the results are just as negative. At no point am I able to feel smug.

For what it's worth, photos 7 and 10 show police, but this isn't unusual for what I saw of Manhattan. The officer in #7 is standing watch at the door to the building as people are coming and going, but that's the case at many places throughout the city and the patrol car being parked there tells me that it's just a temporary thing. The officer in #10 is directing traffic, which is also very common and has nothing to do with security or law enforcement. Numbers 8 and 9 show construction workers. Those in #9 are essentially on tourist duty, keeping people out of harms' way. I used my rangefinder cloaking device to sneak a picture past the gentleman in the foreground, while immediately afterwards a woman who had been taking lots of photos in the area asked for his permission and was turned away. The proprietor of the falafel stand in #8 had a sign saying that he's a veteran, but again this is something that I saw at several hot-dog stands in other areas of the city. So while I thought that the inclusion of a popular dish from the middle east was interesting, none of the rest of New York seems to care.

Irma, thanks; these photos were all taken with monochrome film. But it's a modern design with a look that's somewhat untraditional, with grain in the shadows - like digital - instead of in the highlights. And even film doesn't escape from being digital photography: obviously these are scanned, but even prints from the photo lab are invariably printed from digital scans instead of optically with an enlarger. So I appreciate your compliment, and I have spent a fair bit of time to get the analog-to-digital conversion to what we see here, even though I really should rescan a couple of them to get a better starting place. Maybe next time.