In my final blog I wanted to write about Zelizer and her approach to the photos of 9/11 and the Holocaust. To me when I see images of these two events I can't help but imagine the day of 9/11. Obviously I can't think back to the Holocaust because I wasn't alive then but thinking back to 9/11 it is true that the photos continued to flow in day after day. Weeks after the event I was still seeing new photos of the planes and ground zero. When I think back I remember seeing the video of the planes crashing into the world trade centers that day but it was the newspaper that continually filled me in with new photos. This point is interesting because Zelizer states on page 50, "No wonder, then, that by the end of November one poll reported that the percentage of people watching network television had dropped dramatically, while those depending on the popular press for information had tripled from the first week after the attacks." This was very true in my case even though I was young because my mom is a reader of the daily press. I didn't notice that interesting little fact until reading this article. So to go on we read that pictures play a crucial role as tools to recovery Zelizer says. I can say that by seeing so many picture of 9/11 that now when I view these images they are iconic and I do not view them the same way as I did the year of the attacks. In one way or another images stand for something. They are a part of our life and without them we would have no physical evidence of past events. They also help us to get through difficult times, alleviating trauma which allows us to move on. There are many examples of this, not only the Holocaust and 9/11. Images do a lot more than we think they do for us. It could be pictures of a wrecked car from a drunk driving accident or something else of that sort that allow us to remember an unfortunate event and assist us moving forward in our lives.
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