I volunteered as a forensic photographer. After a couple of weeks, I started to do journalistic photography after I convinced them of the importance that someone do it. They knew that I wouldn’t take pictures that were exploitative or disrespectful, that I would present this material in a sensitive way. I didn’t take any pictures that showed body parts, case numbers or victims’ names. If I inadvertently got that information into an image, I wouldn’t print it.
I would show up at 4 a.m. because I liked to take pictures when the sun came up. I brought a 35mm camera and a couple of lenses and my protective gear–my respirator, my helmet. Everyone was in their white disposable suits so you couldn’t recognize them. You couldn’t talk to them because everyone had their masks on. The safety officer used to yell at me, kindheartedly, when I took off my goggles to take a picture. The landfill was a surreal, dreary, bitterly cold place.
The challenge for me was to show this thing that was very upsetting to people without showing them too much. These pictures are not a true representation of what happened. They’re filtered. The scenes I was seeing obviously weren’t pretty at all.
The question I was trying to ask was, “Why is our society going to such tremendous lengths to find and identify everybody?” The government agencies involved wanted to give some comfort to the families, but also I was looking at it as a way the society mourns. Even though my pictures are sci-fi, futuristic images, it was a sentimental endeavor, and it shows how human we are.
