2006年VOA标准英语-Home Sought for Largest Collection of 9/11 Imag

By Kane Farabaugh
New York, NY
17 August 2006
 
watch Sept 11 Archive report
 
  
  
It started out as a call for footage of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.  It turned into the largest collection of pictures, interviews, and videos of America's national tragedy, held on the hard drives of a computer belonging to a company that no longer exists.  VOA's Kane Farabaugh reports the man who owns the archive wants it to go to a good home -- for a price.

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They are the images of disaster... The scenes of destruction…
Moments of misery¹ and despair…
All captured by the lenses of professional and amateur camera people around the city of New York.

Every image you see, every frame of video marked by time code, sits on the hard drive of one computer.

 
Steve Rosenbaum
  
The story of these images begins on September 11, 2001, with Steve Rosenbaum's production company, Camera Planet, on the ground in Manhattan.  Six cameras rolled as the events unfolded.

"We started to edit a film from these six photographers, said Mr. Rosenbaum, "and each one who had come back that day or the following day had done these long sit down interviews where we said, 'Where were you, what did you see, what did you feel?' As we edited together this film of these voices, and these faces, somebody in my office, I don't remember who it was, sat and looked at a rough cut and said, This is terrible.'  I said, 'Yeah it's really disturbing,' and they said, 'No, it's a bad film.'  And they said, 'It doesn't look like New York.' "

So Rosenbaum put an ad out in the New York newspaper The Village Voice, looking for images or footage from that day. 

"The next day the phone started ringing, and people said, 'Thank you so much. I just want to tell my story.'  And from that moment on, and for the weeks after, we just had a stream of people coming through the door saying, 'Here's the footage I have, here's my story.'  And then we had the voice of New York."

A lot has happened since the ad first went out.  Rosenbaum's documentary is done, and so is Camera Planet. His production company fell on hard times in a city where television feature work was hard to come by in the months following 9/11.

 
Jan Ramirez 
  
But he was left with a unique and extensive collection of one of the most recorded events in history.  More than 500 hours of footage and thousands of images of the terrorist attacks on New York City.  It is the largest collection of footage Jan Ramirez has seen in her work as curator with the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.

"The synchronous² ability to capture these multiple perspectives from the street, from apartment towers, from helicopters, from the mountains of New Jersey³, from Brooklyn Heights -- is extremely important to, I think, understanding how this event seared into the international consciousness," she told us. "So having the ability to draw on an archive that is really preserving the compilation⁴ of these democratic perspectives in a sense is extremely important."

9-11 NY terror attack video archive  
  
Owning the archive hasn't been easy.  Rosenbaum became a de facto gatekeeper for the steady stream of requests that continue to keep coming in from companies around the world looking for footage.

"If I'm the gatekeeper, part of the reason I'm going public about the archive and the need for a home is because I don't want to be.  And nor do I think I have the scholarly expertise⁵, nor is it appropriate for one individual to make those judgments⁶.  In a perfect world, there would be a group of scholars and experts who would become the voice, the spirit, and the brains of this archive."

The archive is now on the market.  Rosenbaum hopes to sell it to pay off Camera Planet's debt to the bank.  He's talking with several organizations, including two television networks and the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, where Jan Ramirez is already collecting other items for a museum still on the drawing board.

"Ideally, it should be held, I think, by a public institution that is committed to public education and public access," says Ramirez. "Certainly because of the topic that it is going to document I think it would be a potentially wonderful muscle tissue to add to the World Trade Center Memorial."

The permanent memorial at the World Trade Center site is scheduled for completion by September of 2009.  A memorial that will include the remnants of the tragedy, both physical and digital, collected by New Yorkers. 

1 misery   

n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦

参考例句：

• Business depression usually causes misery among the working class.商业不景气常使工薪阶层受苦。
• He has rescued me from the mire of misery.他把我从苦海里救了出来。

2 synchronous   

adj.同步的

参考例句：

• The message can be used only with synchronous operations.消息只能与同步操作一起使用。
• Synchronous machines do not easily fall out of step under normal conditions.在正常情况下，同步电机不易失去同步。

3 jersey   

n.运动衫

参考例句：

• He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
• They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致，都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。

4 compilation   

n.编译，编辑

参考例句：

• One of the first steps taken was the compilation of a report.首先采取的步骤之一是写一份报告。
• The compilation of such diagrams,is of lasting value for astronomy.绘制这样的图对天文学有永恒的价值。

5 expertise   

n.专门知识(或技能等)，专长

参考例句：

• We were amazed at his expertise on the ski slopes.他斜坡滑雪的技能使我们赞叹不已。
• You really have the technical expertise in a new breakthrough.让你真正在专业技术上有一个全新的突破。

6 judgments   

判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判

参考例句：

• A peculiar austerity marked his judgments of modern life. 他对现代生活的批评带着一种特殊的苛刻。
• He is swift with his judgments. 他判断迅速。