Some memorials are built to last for generations. Others exist only briefly, relying on the people who encounter them to carry their meaning forward. More than two decades ago, artist Michael Townsend and his collaborators at Tape Art chose the latter approach, covering the streets of Manhattan with hundreds of life-size figures made from something as ordinary and temporary as tape.
The project eventually grew into 490 individual drawings, placed along four enormous heart-shaped routes across Manhattan. Each figure was connected to someone lost in the attack that happened on September 11th, 2001, while the work as a whole became an unusually personal way of moving through a city that was still processing an enormous collective loss. Now, 25 years later, an archive containing thousands of photographs, videos, maps, and stories has returned online, allowing people to experience the project again.
Scroll down to see some of the original Tape Art photographs, learn how the project came together, and visit “The Eleventh of September” website to explore the four hearts and the individual stories preserved along them.
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Tape Art had already spent years turning ordinary public surfaces into temporary drawings before this project began
Tape Art itself began long before this particular project. The group traces its first tape drawing to Providence, Rhode Island, in 1989, when Townsend and fellow artists began experimenting with tape to create large-scale drawings directly on the surfaces around them. The material offered an unusual freedom: a wall, storefront, sidewalk, tunnel, or almost any other surface could temporarily become a canvas, and the artwork could later disappear without permanently changing it.
Their experience creating art alongside rescue workers in Oklahoma City in 1995 changed how they saw that temporary practice
After 9/11, the artists felt an immediate need to respond through the kind of public art they knew best
That temporary nature soon became central to the group’s philosophy. Tape Art developed into a collaborative practice in which making the work, meeting people around it, and responding to a particular place could matter as much as the finished image. Most of the group’s murals were deliberately removed within a day.
Their Jersey City studio overlooked lower Manhattan, making the aftermath impossible for them to experience from a distance
The project also carried a personal connection, as the artists had previously met members of New York rescue teams
The artists’ understanding of what such temporary work could accomplish changed significantly in 1995. While in Oklahoma City, three members of Tape Art spent 58 hours creating a three-story mural inside the Myriad Convention Center, then being used as a center for rescue operations following the attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building there. Firefighters and rescue workers passing through the building stopped to look at the mural, while the artists also worked with children and families in local hospitals. For Tape Art, the experience showed that an artwork did not need to last physically to create a lasting space for conversation and reflection.
Within a week, they decided to create life-size portraits honoring firefighters and airline passengers who had lost their lives
What began as an immediate artistic response eventually grew into 490 individual portraits across Manhattan
That lesson became especially important six years later. Tape Art had a studio in Jersey City overlooking lower Manhattan, and after the attacks on the World Trade Center, the artists felt compelled to respond. They also had a personal connection to the rescue community: through their earlier work in Oklahoma City, they had met members of New York rescue teams, some of whom were among those lost on 9/11.
Michael Townsend mapped four enormous hearts over Manhattan to determine where the portraits would be created
The artists then followed those heart-shaped routes through the city one location at a time
Within weeks, an idea began taking shape. Instead of creating a single monument in one location, the artists moved through Manhattan and placed life-size tape figures directly into the fabric of the city. Eventually, Michael drew four large hearts across a map of Manhattan, creating the routes the team would follow as they searched for places to make each figure.
The project deliberately placed remembrance within the ordinary spaces New Yorkers encountered every day
Following a fixed route also meant the artists could not simply choose the easiest or most convenient locations
That meant the memorial could appear almost anywhere. The artists worked across storefronts, construction barriers, building facades, street furniture, and countless other surfaces encountered along the routes. When a heart passed through Central Park and conventional walls disappeared, they even adapted their approach to the natural environment. Many of the drawings were created without formal permission, making the project as much about moving through New York and interacting with it as about the tape itself.
When a heart-shaped route crossed Central Park, the absence of walls forced the artists to rethink how a portrait could be made
Some drawings stayed up longer than others, but their temporary nature was always part of the project
The poses of the figures also carried meaning. In the years immediately following September 11th, even establishing a complete and definitive record of everyone who lost their lives was an evolving process. Tape Art spent years comparing government, news, and independent records, gathering photographs and biographical information along the way. The raised hands visible in many of the silhouettes formed part of a counting system intended to acknowledge people beyond those represented by an individual drawing. As the records became more complete, that visual language changed with them.
Behind every figure was an effort to connect the drawing with an individual person rather than an anonymous number
The artists spent years gathering photographs, biographies, and other information about the people represented
What began as an immediate artistic response became a project that consumed years of the artists’ lives. The final figure was drawn in the spring of 2005, but the effort continued as the team organized everything they had documented. By the time the larger project concluded in 2006, the artists and their collaborators had contributed more than 30,000 volunteer hours, without institutional backing, grants, or outside funding. Preserving the work presented an unusual problem. Tape Art was intentionally temporary, so the physical drawings were never supposed to survive indefinitely. The solution was to build an equally ambitious digital memorial. When the original website was published in 2006, it brought together roughly 15,000 photographs, maps, written material, 360-degree panoramas, collages, soundtracks, and short video pieces recorded for the individual locations. Visitors could move through each of the four hearts or search for particular names.
At the time, even establishing a definitive record of everyone lost on 9/11 was still an evolving process
The raised hands seen on many figures formed part of a visual system for acknowledging additional lives lost that day
Technology, however, proved less permanent than expected. As the internet changed, many of the formats and systems the original website depended on became obsolete, and eventually much of the archive became inaccessible. The physical tape figures disappeared as intended, but for years, their digital counterparts disappeared with them.
As records became more complete, the artists gradually adjusted those gestures to reflect the changing count
The memorial therefore evolved alongside the historical record instead of remaining fixed from the moment it began
An unexpected path back to the project opened in 2026. Gordon Wintrob discovered it through “Secret Mall Apartment,” the documentary featuring Townsend and several of his collaborators, and went searching for the old online memorial. When he discovered it was no longer available, he contacted Tape Art and offered to rebuild it using the archive the artists had carefully preserved.
The final portrait was drawn in the spring of 2005, nearly four years after the first figures appeared
Documenting the project continued into 2006, long after many of the original tape drawings had disappeared
The result is the newly restored The Eleventh of September website, where the four heart-shaped paths once again provide the structure for exploring the project. Visitors can open each of its 490 locations individually, revealing the person to whom the drawing was dedicated, where and when it was made, photographs of the artwork, and, in many cases, panoramic views and archival video. Those videos often combine footage from the artists’ journey with biographical details that bring the person behind each silhouette into focus.
By the end, the artists and their collaborators had contributed more than 30,000 volunteer hours to preserving the work
Thousands of photographs, videos, maps, panoramas, and personal stories became the permanent record of art that had long since disappeared
Visitors do not have to experience the archive in a predetermined order. They can choose any of the four hearts, browse the drawings one by one, or search the memorial by name. Someone who begins with a single photograph can quickly find themselves following a route across Manhattan, opening location after location and discovering the individual lives connected to those simple tape outlines.
As weather and the passage of time wore down the tape portraits, so did the advance of technology their website
The website disappeared, but the archived photos and videos remained
And for people actually in New York, the rebuilt site adds something the original version never had. Its ‘Walk’ feature can use a phone’s location to find the nearest of the 490 original drawing sites, allowing visitors to physically follow the heart-shaped paths and stand in the places where the temporary memorial once appeared.
Two decades later, thousands of photographs, videos, maps, and stories have been brought together again online
The rebuilt website recreates all four heart-shaped routes, with each point marking an original portrait location
For everyone else, the restored archive offers its own kind of walk through the city. The drawings themselves may have disappeared years ago, but the photographs, recordings, maps, and stories preserve the encounters that surrounded them. What began with rolls of tape and a decision to leave no permanent mark has, somewhat paradoxically, become a record people can once again explore decades later.
Opening a location reveals the person connected to it alongside photographs, archival footage, and biographical material
Visitors can explore the memorial virtually or, in New York, use the walking feature to follow the original routes themselves
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