Today we wandered up, down, across, around, and behind Manhattan. I don’t know how you go behind a city, necessarily, but I swear to you we did!

My feet are singing, as the expression goes, but our New England trip is moving right along. Tomorrow we head back north to the Massachusetts area. (Wish us luck avoiding toll roads – seriously East Coasters, how do you handle all these toll roads??)

Before I got too much further into my New England Road Trip 2011 coverage, I wanted to point out this project that I was fortunate enough to visit earlier today.

Joe McNally, an extremely talented, New York-based photographer, began this project just weeks after Sept. 11, 2011. In an effort to capture a piece of what happened that day, he set out to photograph those who were at the scene – at Ground Zero – on 9/11. He did this with a giant Polaroid camera that produced images that measured 9×4 feet, after a very long 90 seconds of processing. These images, practically life-sized, make you feel like you’ve met the person, face-to-face.

After staying in storage for nearly 10 years, the 246 giant Polaroid images have been reintroduced to the public alongside 24 new portraits that show where a few of the original subjects now are in their lives for the Faces of Ground Zero exhibit.

If you have a moment, read more about Mr. McNally, this project, and all it stands for here.

And if you can, visit this exhibit as it appears in Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle in New York City. It’s only on display until Sept. 12, so get there soon. You won’t regret it.

It’s an extraordinary, heartbreaking effort, and one that is especially poignant as we get ever-closer to the 10th anniversary of 9/11/2001.

Until later, friends. -a.e.

p.s. Excuse the very sad quality of the photo above. I snapped it rather quickly with my iPhone today.