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CNN Sunday Morning

A Photographer's Reflections on the World Trade Center

Aired November 11, 2001 - 07:55   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: The images of the World Trade Center Towers crumbling to the ground are burned into our memories. A dedicated photographer who watched the horror has chronicled that day.

Here's his vision of the Twin Towers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAMILO JOSE VERGARA, PHOTOGRAPHER: I grew in a town -- a small town South of Santiago that had 8,000 inhabitants. And the biggest building in that town was three-story high.

I arrived to New York in 1970, and that was the time when the World Trade Center was first being built. That become a center of my attention for two reasons: I had never seen a building that big, and also because there was a contrast. The city was going into hard times. The mid-'70s, the city was almost bankrupt.

And then there was a feeling of how would the poverty that is around, with all the social problems, you could build a building this big. So it was a very strange sight. And, you know -- and homeless people congregated there.

And I did photograph the buildings in relation to people to show this immense scale as buildings that refuse to relate to human beings. Slowly, life seemed to revolve around these two buildings that were sort of anchoring this island. You know, sort of putting it in place, you know, like two screws that, you know, say look, now you can't move, you're here.

And the towers were always changing. You know, you would see them -- the colors, the shapes would always be changing as the light move. They were particularly beautiful in the winter. They would pick up the clouds as they pass by.

They could be, in some ways, you know, sort of sharp and cruel and menacing, you know, with the silver color, you know, like daggers. But then, with the late afternoon, it would pick up this really warm sun and they wouldn't be menacing anymore, but there were these really very warm buildings.

There was something that belonged to a different realm of reality. It was more than extraordinary. And of course, when they were lost, my first sense was, you know, this can't be true. So I went there, walked on the streets. And I did want to inhale that air that was coming out of there, you know, that it was like, you know, the Trade Center was coming into me.

So I go out the streets and all of a sudden I see the Trade Center coming out. It's a very strange thing, you know, because you don't -- I know the buildings are not there, but why am I seeing them?

This is what those buildings were. And when you say it well enough, the buildings still survive in some way.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: A book of Vergara's Trade Center photographs will be published soon.

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