Father McGraw: The Observer and The Observed

It's just too much fun to prowl through the photographic record on a hunt, blowing up and cropping down, trying to spot connections, which could be strung together into a narrative--you know, one at least somewhat believable.

Here for instance is an image taken following the September 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon in which Father Steven McGraw is seen in a solitary moment, apparently one subsequent to his starring role in that morning's medical triage vignette, images of which circled the media globe. The lanky matinée idol opus dei priest, with his Good Book and purple stole, is shown in a distracted moment, strolling alongside a metal traffic barrier as his Via Delorosa, all the while under the steady stare of a trim military buzz-cut type, who has both of his hands on his hips!

That's a pet peeve of mine.

Unfortunately, this is one of the few example I've identified from that day's photographic record where such a feat of cross identification can be evidenced. Examples of participants who were recorded in some key "action" images, who were also captured in other images, playing supporting roles perhaps, more "besides-the-point," tangential, even contradictory in the mess of real life, indicative of their presence. It's odd that a sequence consisting as it does of enormous redundancy has so few overlapping elements.