Sometime Lofty Towers: A Photographic Memorial of the World Trade Center [Paperback]

Robert Hutchinson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 2001

"Sometime Lofty Towers" is a hushed photographic elegy to the World Trade Center. Because every image of the Twin Towers must henceforth be instinct with the multitudinous memory of lives cut short there, this book restricts itself to architectural images of the Towers' proud presence and melancholy absence-and eschews as "de trop" the all-too-familiar images of the violence and anguish of that awful morning. The majority of the photographs in this book come from the luminous portfolio of Jake Rajs, master photographer of the New York City skyline and Hudson River. They track the progress of a composite day of yesteryear, as Rajs's camera wheels with the sun from ruddy morning to starry night about New York's quarter-mile-high icons.

Of the forty-six full-color images of Lower Manhattan in "Sometime Lofty Towers", only one in every five depicts the aftermath of the World Trade Center's destruction. The post-destruction images silently point at the Towers "in absentia"; each such image being juxtaposed with an image of the Towers in their pride taken from a similar viewpoint and in similar light.

The book opens with a dedication to "the heroic rescuers who died striving in the name of mercy"; followed by the full text of the impassioned remarks of Governor Pataki to the joint session of the New York State Legislature on September 13th. A sensitive yet informative introductory essay by scientist Robert Hutchinson compares and contrasts the moral and physical dimensions of the events of September 11th; recounts the history of the construction of the World Trade Center and describes its ultimate physical dimensions; describes the flight paths and physical dimensions of the airliners that struck the Towers; and explains the physics of the catastrophic collapses.

The title of the book is a phrase immortalized in Shakespeare's Sonnet 64: "When sometime lofty towers I see down razed, / And brass eternal slave to mortal rage /...This thought is as a death, which cannot choose / But weep to have that which it fears to lose." In like fashion, "Sometime Lofty Towers" seeks to ease the pain of ruin with the balm of remembered beauty.

The Widows' and Children's Fund of the Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York will receive one dollar from every copy of this book sold.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A graceful, grateful work in an oversized format...visual splendor...you will not be able to put this book down." -- The Book Reader, Spring/Summer 2002

Beautiful and haunting photos are used as a memorial to the Towers. -- Book Magazine, July/August, 2002

Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: Browntrout Publishers (October 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0763154725
• ISBN-13: 978-0763154721
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,601,636 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Touching, November 19, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Sometime Lofty Towers: A Photographic Memorial of the World Trade Center (Paperback)

First of all, I liked this book a lot. Incredible photos and like another reviewer pointed out, no real overly sappy commentary.
But someone who wrote a review before mentioned that they'd rather not have the 9/11 photos in the book. Understandable, but I think the style in which this book was put together is powerful. To show photos of the once magnificent and strong towers on one page and then the devistation on another only re-emphasizes and reaffirms that we will never forget what happened that day.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a marriage of true signs, November 7, 2001

By 

Carl Lankowski (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sometime Lofty Towers: A Photographic Memorial of the World Trade Center (Paperback)

Robert Hutchinson captures the innermost workings of western civilization in his moving photographic tribute to the spirit of New York. Its power and beauty are symbolized by the World Trade Towers. And now in the aftermath of 911 so is its passion. I hazard that many of us who once lived in Manhattan and have since moved away have forgotten how much we loved New York. Hutchinson reminds us how much of a state of mind the city is. For you can never truly move away. Just as we can never truly move away from the verity infused in the Bard's sonnet that the author briliantly matches to the stretchings and tragedy of modernity in the tower's tragic end. In a single allusion, he redeems the tragedy. The coldly compelling text describing the impacts and collapse of the towers stands in bleak and deathly juxtaposition to the soaring inspiration of New York. For as real as the towers is the kind of society that built, used, and toiled in it. It is an international, indeed global society, a triumph of western ideas of tolerance, inclusion, vibrancy, freedom. In my Columbia University days we used to refer to the neighborhood as "Bagdad on Hudson," in celebration of the rich diversity and energy of the place. That in the end was the target of the attack. Hutchinson's memorial helps us weep for the victims, recognize the simple heroism of ordinary inhabitants ... and holds up a mirror to our glory.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful tribute to the Twin Towers, October 23, 2001

By 

Science Guy (Hoboken, N.J.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sometime Lofty Towers: A Photographic Memorial of the World Trade Center (Paperback)

Browntrout Publishers, the writer Robert Hutchinson, and the photographer Jake Rajs have achieved something extrordinary. Six weeks after September 11, 2001, they have produced a gripping, breathtaking, timeless memorial to the World Trade Center. "Sometime Lofty Towers" (the Shakespearean sonnet to which the title alludes seems eerily prescient) tells the story of the creation and destruction of the Twin Towers with heartbreaking, riveting photographs by Rajs and an equally heartbreaking, riveting essay by Hutchinson. There is a grandeur, solemnity, and physicality to Hutchinson's style that perfectly suits the subject. He seems to build the Twin Towers for us from the ground up, making us marvel at the ingenuity of their design; his concluding account of precisely how the two terrorist-guided planes annihilated the towers thus seems all the more awful and tragic. This is a fitting tribute indeed for the World Trade Center--and for those to whom Hutchinson eloquently dedicates the book, "the heroic rescuers who died striving in the name of mercy."