The Falling Man Projects
About Jeroen Zwaap
About Jeroen Zwaap
In several projects the artist deals with the impact and implications of having seen Richard Drew's 'Falling Man' image as he tries to answer questions like: why is this picture such a strong resonating one? How did this image shape the view on the American trauma? What are the moral implications of watching a man falling to his death?
"Although I cannot exactly remember what I felt when I saw the image of The Falling Man by Richard Drew for the first time, I can imagine what I felt. I can imagine that I saw the human vulnerability in the most intimate of moments in a human life. The grace of it. The calmness aimed head-down towards the inevitable. I must have seen the juxtaposition between the graceful fall and the horrific timeline that lead to this fall. I think I did not understand the power of photography yet (do I today?), but I must have seen how time had been suspended and created an aura, or maybe even a protective shield, of timelessness around the person.
And although there are no recognizable facial features, I would’ve recognized myself in this person. I would have asked myself: what would I feel, what would I do?
In several projects the artist deals with the impact and implications of having seen Richard Drew's 'Falling Man' image as he tries to answer questions like: why is this picture such a strong resonating one? How did this image shape the view on the American trauma? What are the moral implications of watching a man falling to his death?
"Although I cannot exactly remember what I felt when I saw the image of The Falling Man by Richard Drew for the first time, I can imagine what I felt. I can imagine that I saw the human vulnerability in the most intimate of moments in a human life. The grace of it. The calmness aimed head-down towards the inevitable. I must have seen the juxtaposition between the graceful fall and the horrific timeline that lead to this fall. I think I did not understand the power of photography yet (do I today?), but I must have seen how time had been suspended and created an aura, or maybe even a protective shield, of timelessness around the person.
And although there are no recognizable facial features, I would’ve recognized myself in this person. I would have asked myself: what would I feel, what would I do?
In several projects the artist deals with the impact and implications of having seen Richard Drew's 'Falling Man' image as he tries to answer questions like: why is this picture such a strong resonating one? How did this image shape the view on the American trauma? What are the moral implications of watching a man falling to his death?
"Although I cannot exactly remember what I felt when I saw the image of The Falling Man by Richard Drew for the first time, I can imagine what I felt. I can imagine that I saw the human vulnerability in the most intimate of moments in a human life. The grace of it. The calmness aimed head-down towards the inevitable. I must have seen the juxtaposition between the graceful fall and the horrific timeline that lead to this fall. I think I did not understand the power of photography yet (do I today?), but I must have seen how time had been suspended and created an aura, or maybe even a protective shield, of timelessness around the person.
And although there are no recognizable facial features, I would’ve recognized myself in this person. I would have asked myself: what would I feel, what would I do?
In several projects the artist deals with the impact and implications of having seen Richard Drew's 'Falling Man' image as he tries to answer questions like: why is this picture such a strong resonating one? How did this image shape the view on the American trauma? What are the moral implications of watching a man falling to his death?
"Although I cannot exactly remember what I felt when I saw the image of The Falling Man by Richard Drew for the first time, I can imagine what I felt. I can imagine that I saw the human vulnerability in the most intimate of moments in a human life. The grace of it. The calmness aimed head-down towards the inevitable. I must have seen the juxtaposition between the graceful fall and the horrific timeline that lead to this fall. I think I did not understand the power of photography yet (do I today?), but I must have seen how time had been suspended and created an aura, or maybe even a protective shield, of timelessness around the person.
And although there are no recognizable facial features, I would’ve recognized myself in this person. I would have asked myself: what would I feel, what would I do?
In several projects the artist deals with the impact and implications of having seen Richard Drew's 'Falling Man' image as he tries to answer questions like: why is this picture such a strong resonating one? How did this image shape the view on the American trauma? What are the moral implications of watching a man falling to his death?
"Although I cannot exactly remember what I felt when I saw the image of The Falling Man by Richard Drew for the first time, I can imagine what I felt. I can imagine that I saw the human vulnerability in the most intimate of moments in a human life. The grace of it. The calmness aimed head-down towards the inevitable. I must have seen the juxtaposition between the graceful fall and the horrific timeline that lead to this fall. I think I did not understand the power of photography yet (do I today?), but I must have seen how time had been suspended and created an aura, or maybe even a protective shield, of timelessness around the person.
And although there are no recognizable facial features, I would’ve recognized myself in this person. I would have asked myself: what would I feel, what would I do?
In several projects the artist deals with the impact and implications of having seen Richard Drew's 'Falling Man' image as he tries to answer questions like: why is this picture such a strong resonating one? How did this image shape the view on the American trauma? What are the moral implications of watching a man falling to his death?
"Although I cannot exactly remember what I felt when I saw the image of The Falling Man by Richard Drew for the first time, I can imagine what I felt. I can imagine that I saw the human vulnerability in the most intimate of moments in a human life. The grace of it. The calmness aimed head-down towards the inevitable. I must have seen the juxtaposition between the graceful fall and the horrific timeline that lead to this fall. I think I did not understand the power of photography yet (do I today?), but I must have seen how time had been suspended and created an aura, or maybe even a protective shield, of timelessness around the person.
And although there are no recognizable facial features, I would’ve recognized myself in this person. I would have asked myself: what would I feel, what would I do?
Forgetting Man
Man'. It shows a real person falling from the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It is horrifying, intimate, and strangely still.
I was interested in why this image remains so present, why it keeps returning, and what happens when an image already heavy with history and trauma is placed repeatedly back into a system of circulation.
You call yourself an artist-researcher, researching encounters between people, technologies and environments. How does this work connect to this position?
In my practice, I often set up situations in which people, technologies, and environments actively participate in what the work becomes. For this I often explore and make use of the digital materiality of photography.
In Forgetting Man, the environment is digital: Instagram, its interface, its compression, its rhythms of visibility and repetition.The work
is not only about image degradation. It is about creating an encounter between a human gesture, a photographic image, and a platform. By repeating the gesture, I condensed and sped up a process that usually happens invisibly and made the gesture's effect of hyper-circulation on the image visible.
What did the work become?
First, it became an Instagram page: a performance archive of the repeated gesture. Later, I made a video from the sequence, where the decay becomes visible as movement. I added a soundscape to make the process of digital deterioration more bodily and atmospheric.
So the work exists as a performance, an archive, a video, a soundscape, and a deteriorated image-trace.
Do you feel there is an ethical tension in this work? If so, what is the tension for you?
Yes. The Falling Man is not just an image. It
'Forgetting Man' starts with a simple almost careless gesture. Can you explain what you did?
Yes, it started as a material experiment with generation loss. At the time I was playing around with a the repetitive process of scanning and printing an image over and over again when I decided to transpone this gesture into the digital realm. So I placed a screenshot of Richard Drew’s photograph The Falling Man on Instagram. Then I screenshotted my own post, uploaded that image again, screenshotted it again, and repeated this process almost a thousand times.
It was a simple gesture: post, screenshot, repost. But through repeating it almost a thousand times for several hours it felt like it became a performance inside the platform.
What happened to the image?
The photograph slowly began to fall apart. With each new post it lost sharpness, contrast, detail, and recognisability. At first, it was still clearly a photograph. Later, it became a fragile structure of pixels, noise, colour fields, and traces of form. I set up a condition and let the platform do what it does. Instagram, compression, the interface, screenshotting,
and repetition all participated in the decay of the image.
Why did you choose this image?
It is an image that has haunted me for years, shot by Richard Drew, coined 'The Falling
shows a real person at a real moment of fear, violence, and death. That can never be neutral.
The work does not resolve that tension. It keeps it present. For me, the ethical question is part of the material of the work: when is this gesture of circulation a form of critical attention, and when does it become another form of consumption, and eventually forgetting?
What is Forgetting Man about for you?
It is about the vulnerability of digital images and the vulnerability of memory. Digital images often seem permanent, but they are shaped by compression, storage, platforms, circulation, and repetition.
Forgetting Man asks what happens when an image keeps circulating. When does visibility become a form of forgetting? And what remains when an image slowly loses its sharpness, its recognisability, and perhaps its ability to speak?