These photos of two people dressed as the Twin Towers were taken during the 2001 Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, just seven weeks after the September 11th attacks. The angel wings and halos clearly frame the towers as memorial figures, honoring the thousands lost in the attacks. Instead of being seen as mocking, it was meant as a tribute, transforming the buildings into celestial beings.
The embrace between the two figures was especially moving. It suggested solidarity, grief, and the idea of the towers as “souls” reunited in the afterlife.
Costumes like this reflected how Halloween in 2001 became a public ritual of mourning as much as celebration. Many participants used costumes, floats, and puppets to grapple with loss and to express resilience.
Halloween in Greenwich Village in 2001 was unlike any other year. The Village Halloween Parade, usually one of New York’s most exuberant and flamboyant celebrations—with hundreds of thousands of costumed revelers and wild floats—took place just seven weeks after the attacks on September 11th.
There was real uncertainty at first about whether the event would even happen. New York was still raw with grief, rescue and recovery efforts continued at Ground Zero, and many wondered if a giant street party would be seen as disrespectful. But organizers decided to go forward, framing the parade not just as a party, but as an act of resilience and defiance: a way for New Yorkers to reclaim their streets, to be together, and to show the world that creativity and joy would not be extinguished by terror.
Newspapers at the time noted how the parade became more of a vigil than a carnival. Some marchers held banners with messages of unity and remembrance, while others wore black armbands. Yet, alongside the grief, there was laughter, flamboyance, and the familiar theatricality of Greenwich Village—proof that the city’s spirit could not be broken.
0 comments:
Post a Comment