“Self Portrait” Lago di Como, Italy 24 Hours Series ©2005

About Susan Ressler     Inquiry

While photographing in Italy during July 2005, terrorists set off bombs on a double-decker bus and in the London "tube." This attack resonated for me in numerous ways: I was on vacation, and with camera around my neck, was taking all sorts of pictures of what I saw, and not always consciously.

Things had changed after the bombings, but the deeper change was in me, in my psyche. I realized that in a given span of 24 hours, I'd recorded images that bespoke of terror as well as beauty. While at Lake Como, I'd made a picture that seemed almost timeless, but three or four hours later, I photographed stone carvings from the 11th century in which a winged demonic cat sat under two figures whose faces had been violently abraded by time.

Using the vehicle of a narrative travelog, the following pictures and text, often tongue in cheek, tell the tale of my journey.