Sept 11 wreckage: Photos on exhibit in NY

New York, Sep 7: A new exhibit on the September. 11 attacks wastes no time in grabbing visitors' attention with a piece of landing gear and a pair of firetruck doors at the gallery entrance.

The artifacts pulled from the wreckage then lead to 1,500 photographs and videotaped testimonials from survivors, offering ways remember an event that still resonates with the New Yorkers.

The New-York Historical Society exhibit ''here is new york: remembering 9/11'' opens on Tuesday for the sixth anniversary of the attacks and will remain open for the rest of the year.

The exhibit takes place apart from the official commemoration, which is more subdued this year than last year's anniversary, when US President George W Bush attended.

This year, the main event will take place outside the World Trade Center site for the first time because of new construction.

But many want to hold on to the memories.

''People are forgetting 9/11, and I feel like it's going to happen again, another attack,'' said Joanne Capestro, who escaped from the 87th floor of the World Trade Center's north tower and is featured in the video testimonials.

''This exhibit gives me a sense of healing,'' she said. ''This is the first year I'm going back to work on the 11th.'' Some artifacts look as if they could be pieces in a modern art museum: a twisted girder, a bent piece of facade, a mangled Venetian blind.

Stephen Edidin, curator of the exhibit along with Marilyn Kushner, said all of the pieces were emotional, but not art.

''We live in a period of modernism where people see abstract objects and recognize them as sculpture. The artistic merit draws you in, but it's not a work of art. It's something else, and it becomes more powerful,'' Edidin said.

The photographs covering the walls of two galleries recreate a spontaneous exhibit called ''here is new york'' that sprung up in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan shortly after the attacks, when pictures started appearing in a storefront. Organizers called it ''a democracy of photographs'' because anyone was invited to submit work.

REUTERS>