Photo of the Week #419

September 14, 2026
Photographs, by definition, capture images, moments, and ultimately places that would otherwise be lost; consequently, their meaning and significance can shift over time. When this photograph of the World Trade Center site was made in 1980, the clouds sprawling over the Hudson River would not have seemed anywhere near as elegiac, and the open expanse of sky would not have suggested absence and loss in the way that it does now.

In this sweeping vista, the soaring facade and cathedral-like, ground-level windows of the World Trade Center can be seen on the left side of the photograph, while the greater expanse of the photo is given over to the river and the view of the New Jersey shoreline on the other side. The central foreground of the photograph features one of the most idiosyncratic aspects of the early WTC site: the urban beach that was created by expanding the shoreline with the material excavated to create the buildings' foundations and flood barrier. The beach was the site of unsanctioned sunbathing and art performances in the 1970s, until Battery Park City was developed there a year after this photograph was made.

Kenneth Snelson is celebrated as the creator of free-floating tensile sculptures, but his early background as a motion picture cameraman led, years later, to an exploration of panoramic photography. Working with a rotating Cirkut camera, Snelson recorded views of the island of Manhattan that embraced the distortions inherent in the flattening of a 360-degree view onto a sheet of photographic paper. Prints like this one were made with a custom-built printer that Snelson created to accommodate film negatives ten feet in size.