"The aftermath #1 - On these 20 years of 9/11, I thought I’d take a look back at the work I did about it. In 2001 I was working mainly as an editorial illustrator/ caricaturist, but I didn’t have a regular space as editorial cartoonist. So my most significant work around this tragic event and its ramifications started around 2006, when I began working regularly for Diário de Notícias, and later the New Statesman. (I actually have an illustration about Bin Laden when Clinton was president, but at the time my work was not digital and I’ll have to look for the original)
So let’s begin with a double spread illustration @diariodenoticias.pt asked me to do, for the 5 year anniversary. I’ve always been interested in the circular feel of history, on how one can not look at one event isolated from the chain of events that preceded it and will follow. So I aimed at a graphic depiction of a self contained series of cause and effect. From left to right: Bin Laden as the grim reaper; firefighters as characters in Munch’s the Scream; Mayor Giuliani as the one that stepped up and tried to deal with the immediate disaster (at the time he became almost a hero, a far cry of what he is today); Bush when he heard about the attack (he was speaking with school children, I believe, and his expression was memorable); Guantanamo’s prisionners; coming from the firefighters, soldiers capturing Saddam; Saddam was found in a hole and was subsequently executed, his connection to the attacks never proven, hence the paper plane; close to the detainees, an islamic radical shooting a plane with a bazooka at the towers, outside of the fence. Repeat."
