nod to Sinsabaugh, he also uses panoramas to
document the intersection of place and form. This
is perhaps most evident in,On the Edge, New York
Waterfront, 1988, where arrays of city denizens
inhabit the same frame as New York cityscapes.
Traub has also shown significant interest in
photographic composition, especially the some-
times ambiguous space between creative intent and
accident—artistry, according to Traub. On view in a
collection of his work titled,In the Still Life, is the
‘‘fly on the wall’’ quality apparent in many of
Traub’s images. Traub seizes upon seemingly ran-
dom happenings and improbable juxtapositions.
Through Traub’s photographs, the viewer re-
encounters the often-missed absurdities of everyday
life and the surreal aspects sometimes contained
within the ordinary. In this series are pictured, for
example: a sleeping baby whose blanket lies on a
swatch of astroturf and whose cover is provided by
an appropriately sized American flag; and three
women dressed head to toe in black clothing passing
by a window display of three mannequins dressed in
white garb.
Another salient feature in a number of Traub’s
photographic projects is his interest in the artful
juxtaposition of photographic image and text. In
two volumes that Traub co-edited,Italy Observed
In Photography and Literature, andAn Angler’s
Album, Traub explores the synergism that results
from the pairings of quotations and photographs
that are not necessarily illustrative of one another.
InItaly Observed, images chosen by Traub (includ-
ing five of his own), which alternate between gritty
realism and neo-pictorialist romanticism are com-
bined with Luigi Ballerini’s selection of textual
excerpts from American and Italian writers. This
original pairing of words and images and their
unexpected synthesis of meaning is used to mine
the accumulated mythologies of encounter sur-
rounding Italy. Transformed by time and new asso-
ciations, these photographs also comment on the
ever-changing nature of what constitutes place.
What Umberto Eco, in the introduction to the
book, pegs as ‘‘verbal-visual poetry,’’ forces ‘‘the
reader to think, to imagine, to recreate his or her
image of the country—which could well be differ-
ent for everyone’’ (Eco 1988, 6). One such icono-
clastic image of Traub’s,Marriage on the Rocks,
Naples, 1981, displays an awkward assemblage of
disinterested and partially off frame characters,
including a bride, and a groom with his back to
the camera, perched on boulders.
Traub’s interest in and approach to uses of tech-
nology stem from the formative time at ID, where
Moholy-Nagy’s pedagogical vision embraced new
media and emergent technologies. Through his pro-
digious writings on the subject, Traub has intimate-
ly explored the relationship of art to technological
innovation. In pieces such as,Creative Interlocur
and Multimedia Dialog(2000) andIn The Realm
Of The Circuit(2003), Traub situates technological
innovations within a long chain of historical prece-
dents. Traub posits that technology has always been
integrally connected to human expression and that
‘‘technology has always aided, rather than hindered,
human expression and creativity’’ (Traub 2001).
Traub’s technology-based writings act as primers
for creative contributors in the digital world, sug-
gesting innovative ways to connect technological
practice to bodies of knowledge. Traub coined the
term ‘‘creative interlocutor,’’ to describe an indivi-
dual able to integrate seemingly disparate elements
of knowledge and bring them together in previously
unimagined ways. InMetabolism of Photographic
Truth in the Digital Age, Traub examines how no-
tions of photographic verity are challenged by the
uses of digital technology.
One of Traub’s most enduring legacies is his
contribution to the curatorial project, Here is
New York: A Democracy of Photographs, 2001.
Traub, along with writer Michael Shulan, photo-
grapher Gilles Peress, and editor Alice George,
founded the project, which tells the story of Sep-
tember 11, 2001, through photographs.Here is
New Yorkstarted one day after the attacks, with
a single photograph taped to the window of a
downtown Manhattan storefront; the project
grew to include thousands of images taken on
that day by professional photographers, emer-
gency workers, and ordinary bystanders. Each
photograph was displayed anonymously, without
labels or captions, thus removing any distinctions
between professional and amateur contributors,
and underscoring the egalitarian response to the
tragedy, while also making the point that it was
the content of the images rather than their makers
that mattered. The photographs convey an array of
different responses to the tragedy, while bearing
witness to the almost unimaginable events and hon-
oring the people who perished.Here is New York
has traveled both across the United States and
internationally and, in 2002, hundreds of the exhi-
bition photographs were published as a book with
the same name.TRAUB, CHARLES