Some memorials are built to last for generations. Others exist only briefly, relying on the people who encounter them to carry their meaning forward. More than two decades ago, artist Michael Townsend and his collaborators at Tape Art chose the latter approach, covering the streets of Manhattan with hundreds of life-size figures made from something as ordinary and temporary as tape.
The project eventually grew into 490 individual drawings, placed along four enormous heart-shaped routes across Manhattan. Each figure was connected to someone lost in the attack that happened on September 11th, 2001, while the work as a whole became an unusually personal way of moving through a city that was still processing an enormous collective loss. Now, 25 years later, an archive containing thousands of photographs, videos, maps, and stories has returned online, allowing people to experience the project again.
Scroll down to see some of the original Tape Art photographs, learn how the project came together, and visit “The Eleventh of September” website to explore the four hearts and the individual stories preserved along them.
