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CNN Live Sunday

Kids Take Pictures

Aired January 20, 2002 - 17:07   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.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: At time when several exhibits in New York are documenting the aftermath of September 11, one gallery is offering a different perspective -- it is displaying photographs taken by children, who considered the World Trade Center part of their neighborhood. Hillary Lane takes a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HILLARY LANE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Give a child a camera and he will show you things in a way you have never seen before, capturing the purity and innocence photographers often work a lifetime to achieve.

JESSE BENEDETTI, STUDENT PHOTOGRAPHER: I was taking the sky, but I put the World Trade Center to make it better.

LANE (on camera): So, was this to describe blue or...

BENEDETTI: Yes.

LANE (voice-over): Armed with a list of adjectives and disposable cameras, last June, a second-grade class set out on an assignment to photograph their world -- their neighborhood downtown.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And if you look down there, you can see how close -- that is the backyard of this school.

LANE: Beth Schiffer's (ph) son Jesse, was one of the photographers. She runs a commercial photo lab and knew the photographs should be put on display.

BETH SCHIFFER, JESSE'S MOTHER: It's that innocent kind of pure vision that is so beautiful about them.

LANE (on camera): Sometimes the children have trouble explaining why they took a certain photo or if they were trying to convey something. In some cases even whether they meant to photograph the twin towers or whether they were just such a visible part of their neighborhood.

You don't expect to see that kind of color downtown, do you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, not any more. You don't see bright happy yellow. Now we see white, gray, and black now.

LANE (voice-over): The brightness and vibrancy these children remember is something they and their parents desperately want back. Ryan Wu chose the word "reflection" to describe his favorite photo.

RYAN WU, STUDENT PHOTOGRAPHER: But I think it sort of just reflects like memories of it.

LANE (on camera): So the hard part is that it's not there anymore?

WU: Yes.

LANE: You hope they rebuild it?

WU: Yes because I sort of miss walking under the bridge when I go to school.

LANE (voice-over): After spending months in two temporary locations, this class moved back to its regular school in less than two weeks -- just two blocks north of where the World Trade Center stood, one more step toward restoring normalcy and letting kids just be kids.

Hillary Lane for CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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