Found on the fascinating 9/11 "Living Memorial" website. I don't know how to encapsulate my feelings about this photo, but I think this shirt would get you in hot water if you wore it in public today. This woman is Tara Feinberg, daughter of 9/11 victim and FDNY firefighter Alan Brush. She published an essay about survival and honoring the fallen in I understand we each have our ways to heal, but I just have a hard time with the idea of this shirt. She is so proud of it.
It is also especially bizarre when you consider how Tara was championed as a humble survivor by the press. This picture doesn't make sense to me: how does she feel when she looks at herself in the mirror? The shirt offers an artistic rendition of jumpers and explosions at the bases of the towers. It is grim and bridging on exploitative. The way the words are written lends itself to a theme of censorship (looks like the "Explicit Lyrics" sticker put on CDs and tapes back then). I have looked through each photo on this website (many thousands) and this one is unique.
It is so strange, I felt compelled to run an ELA image. ELA is a forensic digital photography concept where you drastically reduce the quality of an image to see if any editing changes were made. An unedited picture will show a smooth, mostly dark, uniform texture. For this picture, the block over her face and the sharp white contrast of the shirt design both illustrate signs of heavy manipulation. So it would appear she never actually wore this shirt. Who wants us to think she did?
Posted by Possesonnbroadway
1 Comment
The shirt is from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing which, to be fair, still seems like a crazy shirt. Also, the shirt just gets better if you see the back of it
[https://www.grailed.com/listings/7028036-vintage-vintage-pre-9-11-1993-twin-towers-t-shirt](https://www.grailed.com/listings/7028036-vintage-vintage-pre-9-11-1993-twin-towers-t-shirt)