In August 2009 I started working on a project for the London Sunday Times Magazine. Although the final article only used 3 images I worked on the story for a week. I was mainly to photograph the Chabad House in Mumbai and the people associated with it. I also photographed the General Manager of the Taj Hotel who lost his family (wife and two children) during the attack.

I photographed Rabbi Berkowitz, the Rabbi chosen by Chabad to organize the reconstruction of the Mumbai Chabad House that was destroyed during the November 26, 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Six Jews including the Rabbi and his wife were killed between Wednesday, November 25 and Friday, November 27.

I covered the 26/11 attacks for the NYT as they were happening. Ruth Fremson, Amiran White and myself were witness to the horrible events those days at the Taj Hotel, Chabad House and Oberoi hotel. We missed the destruction at VT station and on Colaba Causeway. Professionally I did my job and made pictures that people around the world needed to see but those days were very difficult for me on a personal level. I’d never seen anything like it and I never want to again. Though I wasn’t captive and no one I know was killed during those days I, like many native Mumbaikers and Indians alike, felt personally attacked.

I look at the work I did in August and September of 2009 ad a way of getting closure for myself. I needed to see the inside of the Chabad house as an American and as a Jew (albeit secular). I needed to photograph it and I didn’t want to do it with a throng of other photographers. I wanted to do it silently so that I could say goodbye to people I never really knew but had felt connected to for almost a year.

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