Make History: National 9/11 Memorial & Museum

Make History is a world-wide online initiative to gather any and every 9/11 story in an effort to understand history from the perspective of those who witnessed it.  Each photo is overlaid on a current street-view image of the present day, creating a "double exposure" of past and present, which speaks to where we are today: streets are filled with normal everyday activity, but haunted by their past events as seen in this image of a man staring down a street in lower Manhattan.

The site embodies the power of this shared narrative, gathering thousands of photos within days of launch, including an unprecedented aerial photo for the Museum's collection of the towers burning from a commercial flight, landing gear strewn across the street in lower Manhattan

and a "be-headed firetruck" photographed in situ

Most powerfully, the Museum got an email out of the blue from Firefighter Gary Box's father, who discovered him in a photograph on the site, rushing to the Towers;  His father had emailed to thank the Museum for connecting him with what is most likely the last photograph of his son ever taken.

Using the website, visitors can search, group and sequence any number of histories, photos or experiences, creating custom sequences by time, geography or theme. The National September 11 Memorial Museum is the first of its kind to endorse and use the technique on this scale and marks a milestone in the evolving meaning of public history and museums. On January 19, 2010, the New York Times described the project in this way: "Make History is perhaps the most notable recent example of a museum tapping the collective energy of Web users to help build its collection."