I recently returned from a trip to New York City. I had actually planned the trip in august and originally I thought it would just be fun to go the second week in September to celebrate my birthday on the 16th as well as a friends which, was on the 7th. I changed those plans because I thought it would just not be fun in the humid, heavy and hot air to be in the city. So instead, I selected the end of October because of my favorite season, fall.

I'm glad and mad that I changed my plans. I believe in fate and I think it was meant to be that I didn't go that week. The photographer in me wishes like crazy I had been there. Instead, I took time to think about what and how I would photograph the city I have loved for years. A city now changed forever.

My idea was just life. Life now, life after, life continuing.

The photographs included here are just a few of hundreds that I took in those ten days. Every frame was black and white because that just seemed much more fitting. I wanted the photo to tell a story without any distractions. The lines, the starkness, the textures and the simplicity or the complexity are what I wanted to tell the story of this city that I was looking at with changed eyes. That is what I had, changed eyes. After years of photographing New York City and thousands of photographs from the past, this became a fresh look of an old haunt with changed and more experienced eyes.

The photos of the tragedy were taken from the 35th floor of one liberty plaza. The place from which my friend had to run on September eleventh. I knew that I had to see ground zero for myself. Only the year before we were trying to look around the towers to see the view behind them. She still has her job and this gave me the opportunity to experience a little closure for myself and just to see how much work there still was to do.

The city of New York has changed immensely over the years and yes, even more so recently. As a young woman, the city seemed to have no boundaries and overwhelmed me and frightened me. As time went by and my experiences of life grew in number, the city has become remarkably smaller. For the first time I walked in Tompkins Square Park. For the first time I walked on avenue d. for the first time I was mistaken as a native within two minutes of landing. I miss the old Times Square. I miss the street performers. I miss the mystical New York of my youth.

The city has grown in one sense and its boundaries are visible to me now. I am no longer overwhelmed or afraid.
We have both grown and changed forever.

I truly do love New York.

Misti Layne, October 2001 Tragedy Photographs