The terrorist attacks in the USA on September 11th, 2001 cast a deep shadow over the world at the advent of the new century. Getting settled in his new home only two blocks away from the World Trade Center a few days before the attacks, photographer Leo Rubinfien experienced the unprecedented event at close quarters.

Never aiming his camera at the series of incidents in New York that he got swept up in, Rubinfien faced the event photographing faces of people in the street in various cities around the world. His aim was to fix his eyes on the essential result of the event—the “mental wound” inflicted within people by terrorism that tried to strike a moral blow to society through physical destruction.

For six years beginning in 2002, Rubinfien visited cities recently attacked by terrorists including New York, London, Madrid, Moscow, Istanbul and Tokyo, and photographed people in the street. The photographs were compiled, with an extensive text by the photographer, into a book entitled Wounded Cities in 2008.

The series of exhibitions “Wounded Cities” have been given at various venues in the USA and China in varying forms. Presenting 35 works including some that have never been shown, we are pleased to hold this exhibition for the first time in Japan. On the tenth anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks, we hope that this show held in Tokyo, the city Rubinfien photographed first in this series, will form an opportunity to look for messages for us living in the same age among the psychological nuances surfacing on faces of people around the world.