Newspapers commemorate 11 September: A cross-cultural investigation

Abstract

On 12 September 2001, as Hans-Peter Feldmann documented in his 2002 installation 9/12 Front Page, the front pages of newspapers from 151 countries showed similar photographs of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. Despite this cross-cultural agreement on the most salient image at the time, in the decade since, distinct visual narratives of 9/11 have emerged in newspaper anniversary journalism.

This paper examines how The New York Times (US) and Le Monde (France) have used photographs, advertisements, and editorial cartoons in 9/11 anniversary journalism. Using theories of collective memory and photography, along with demographic data of 9/11 victims, I examine how photographic representations of the victims have changed, offering a less complex story of events. I document the images that have been recirculated and discuss why the emergence of visual icons matters to our collective memory of 9/11. And I explore how the papers’ proximity to the events influenced their visual anniversary journalism.