This picture shows a group of young new yorkers feeling rather relaxed sitting by the sea, while over 3,000 people perished in the towers that where burning from the hit by a hijacked plane.
Media critic for the New York Times, Frank Rich viewed this people as simply living their life.
"The young people in Mr Hoepker's photo aren't necessarily callous. They're just Americans."
But Rich's view was immediately disputed when Walter Sipser, identifying himself as the guy in shades at the right of the picture, said he and his girlfriend, apparently sunbathing on a wall, were in fact "in a profound state of shock and disbelief", and that Hoepker, had photographed them without permission in a way that misrepresented their feelings and behaviour.
But this story is not about whether or not these young people were careless about 9-11, its simply art with profound imagery,telling us that memories fade fast. The people in the foreground are us. We are the ones whose lives went on, touched yet untouched, separated from the heart of the tragedy by the blue water of time, which has got ever wider and more impossible to cross. A 10-year-old event belongs to history, not the present. To feel the full sorrow of it now you need to watch a documentary – and then you will switch to something lighter, either because it is painfully clear that too much blood has been spent around the world in the name of this disaster, or simply because changing channels is what humans do. The people in this photograph cannot help being alive, and showing it.
