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Artists Registry
Mobile AL United States
Artist's Statement
St. Paul's Chapel, -A sanctuary but not a shrine-an 18th-century church just yards away from where building 5 of the World Trade Center stood survived the World Trade Center tragedy and became a shrine of courage. New Yorkers call it The Little Chapel That Stood. On the day the twin towers collapsed, windows all over lower Manhattan were smashed. But at St. Paul's, which has stood since 1766, not a window was cracked. Within days of Sept. 11, 2001, the 18th-century church became a sanctuary for ground zero workers, who ate, slept, washed and wept in the chapel where George Washington once prayed. Outside, the church's iron fence became a spontaneous memorial, a grass-roots memorial to the victims of the World Trade Center attack grew from a few remembrances on the fence surrounding St. Paul's Chapel to a cluttered collection of draped tributes and flowers left by mourners. The fence and the block were completely shrouded in jerseys, ball caps and signed drop cloths. -Objects don't speak, but they enable you to remember –
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Mehrdad Vaghefi was born in Tehran Iran and moved to the US in 1978. Though he has had a lifelong interest in photography, he did not pursue it until 1992, when his wife gave him his dream camera as a birthday gift. His work “Remembrance” depicting the 9/11 tragedy was part of 13th Annual “Art with The Southern Drawl” and The Mobile Museum of Art 2004 “Southeastern Juried Exhibition”. Mehrdad is married to ballet dancer Lori Bilbrey-Vaghefi. They reside in Mobile with their three dogs and two cats.