In the banality of the security-camera picture, a vast and abiding anxiety
9/11 was predicated on two pieces of technology: the commercial airliner and the camera. The images of destruction that day mattered as much to the execution of the plan as the destruction itself. Seeing isn't just believing. Seeing can also be assaulting and fearing. As a tactic, ``shock and awe" long predates Donald Rumsfeld . When in history has the effectiveness of that strategy been as indelibly demonstrated as at the Twin Towers?
The pictures were so staggering that no single iconic image has emerged from that day. There is no 9/11 equivalent to the dome of St. Paul's standing steadfast amid the blitz, no set of stills from a latter-day Zapruder film. There is, though, one actual still that might serve as a signature image for 9/11 -- or, rather, for its ongoing impact -- an image that gets at 9/11 more lastingly than anything seen through a viewfinder that day in lower Manhattan. It's the shot of Mohammed Atta , the conspiracy's ringleader, and a fellow hijacker captured on a surveillance camera as they head through airport security in Portland, Maine, early on the morning of the attacks.
This image, too, is one we're familiar with, not just because it's famous (which it is) or because it's cataclysmic and unforgettable (which it's not). Instead, its familiarity comes firsthand. The grainy texture, the superimposed type, the nondescript background: We've all been part of some variation of this image. It's an emanation from a world, our world, in which the price of having others watched is being watched ourselves. The camera that defends us also threatens us.
There's something perversely reassuring about the stupendousness of the images of 9/11. It's not in the nature of apocalypses to repeat themselves. Yet in the very banality of the security-camera picture, there is a vast and abiding anxiety. It's the difference between showing an event and a condition, remembering the past and fearing the future.
Staff writer Mark Feeney covers photography and culture for the Globe. He can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com. 
