This image was the first of a series made from using appropriated photos and headlines from the days and weeks following 9/11. I was an art therapy student at the time at NYU and was in the Village on the evening on 9/10. My professor gave the assignment to create a piece of art and document nor only the physical process (e.g. what media and steps were involved) but the emotional process. The following morning I was driving to my internship working with emotionally disturbed and traumatized children when the news of the first tower being struck came on the radio. By the time I reached my job the second tower had been hit and we all knew it was not a fluke. The entire staff of my job was traumatized; some waiting to hear from husbands and children who wer trapped in the city.

I made this image on 9/12 as a fulfillment of my art therapy assignment and because I did not know where to place this image of the man falling to his death in my psyche. I Xeroxed it over and over again as a way to distance myself from the horror. That is what we do in reality to numb ourselves from the pain and yet the image continues to play in our minds like a stuck tape. The television for those days following was like a stuck tape continuing to show the falling towers. I did what I could to protect my ten and seven year olds from watching, but it was nearly impossible. I found myself listening to the radio obsessed and used this artistic process as a way to organize my feelings of horror, numbness, fear and shame eventually at our need to retaliate so soon against innocent Afghans who were bombed because of their proximity to the Taliban. I made a total of ten collages ending with one of Daniel Pearl in January 2002.