BEING THERE: MEDICAL STUDENT MORGUE VOLUNTEERS FOLLOWING 9-11
by Barry M. Goldstein.
Master Scholars Press at New York University School of Medicine/87 pp./price unavailable (sb)

Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the staff of the New York Medical Examiner’s Office was faced with the somber and overwhelming task of identifying the remains of the 2749 reported missing persons. Being There: Medical Student Morgue Volunteers Following 9-11 uses portraits and interviews to document the experience of sixteen medical students who volunteered to assist with the effort. In makeshift facility that consisted mainly of tents and trucks set up on a closed-off section of 30th Street, these students found themselves on the front lines as the often unrecognizable human remains recovered from the World Trade Center site arrived and the process of identification began.

Each student related their experience to Professor of Medicine Barry M. Goldstein, who also photographed the volunteer students posing with a person or item that anchored them during their time at the morgue. They stand with friends, displaying family photos, and holding items ranging from a tennis racket to the Book of Common Prayer. The difficulty of their experience comes through in the stark honesty of the transcribed interviews, but it is the images that convey the unbelievable weight of the events on these lives. The intense gazes returned by these young people–most in their mid-twenties–show souls made older by witnessing tragedy firsthand.

This review originally appeared in Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, Issue 33.4 (January/February 2006)