‘Please find daddy’: the haunting missing posters of September 11 — SkimNews
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- Phil Buehler photographed more than 500 missing-persons posters on about 20 rolls of film in the weeks after September 11, 2001, then stored them untouched in a box in his studio for 25 years — adding bags of dust from the streets and a rain-soaked salvaged poster before shutting the lid.
- "Countenance: The 9/11 Missing Posters" displays 144 pictures on 24 translucent vellum panels arranged as vertical pairs reminiscent of the twin towers, co-curated by Sarah Celentano and Olena Speranska, the latter a Ukrainian who fled her home after Russia's 2022 invasion.
- The posters evolved from frantic pleas ("Please find daddy," height-and-weight descriptions, butterfly tattoos) to small memorials listing accomplishments like "captain of the whatever" or "coach of the football team" once it became clear no survivors would be found.
- Buehler had been invited to a conference at Windows on the World atop the north tower on 9/11 but declined; the man who extended the invitation died that day, and a friend who planned to attend was delayed.
- The posters captured a democratic cross-section of the towers' workforce — Wall Street bankers in tailored suits hung beside off-duty firefighters, paramedics, transit workers, and Latino service staff from Windows on the World.
- The exhibition's host church, Most Holy Trinity – St Mary's in Williamsburg, carries its own 9/11 link: Father Mychal Judge, the FDNY chaplain and first certified fatality, was a Franciscan, the same order as the parish's current pastor, Rick Riccioli.
- Buehler has also created public memorials for Ukrainian children abducted since 2022 and children killed in Gaza since October 2023, framing the 9/11 installation within a larger practice of public mourning.
Why it matters: For the first time, the public can see the raw visual record of how New Yorkers processed grief in real time after 9/11 — posters that curators describe as shifting from "missing" to "in memoriam" within weeks. Curator Sarah Celentano framed the show as a human bridge for those too young to remember the attacks, and a deliberate counter to political cynicism that frames empathy as weakness.
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