Gary Suson, who calls himself the “Official Photographer at Ground Zero for the Uniformed Firefighters Association,” got exclusive access to the area in the months after September 11th. He later published a book of his photos, "Requiem: Images of Ground Zero," and opened up the Ground Zero Museum Workshop in the Meatpacking District with remnants from the site. When Suson opened the nonprofit museum in 2005, he said 9/11 charities would get “the proceeds.” But families of 9/11 victims told the Post that it hasn't really happened: “It’s just appalling that people think they can make money off the pain and suffering of the surviving family members,” said Al Santoro, a retired deputy chief who lost his 23-year-old firefighter son that day. “It’s just deplorable.”
The price of tickets to the museum, located in a one-room loft on West 14th Street, is now $25 for adults, and $21.50 for kids (plus a $2.50 processing fee). Based on his tax returns, the Post found that Suson donated less than 6% of the profits from the museum to charities between 2008-2011, a period in which the museum made approximately $200K a year.
Then there is the matter of those remnants, which Suson has claimed he was given permission to take (you can watch several interviews with him here): in his taped tour, he says “artifacts were being thrown away...I asked permission of fire officers if I could salvage them. Luckily, they said yes.” Among the items he has are a Path station clock, a twisted piece of fuselage from American Airlines Flight 11, chunks of World Trade Center window glass, eyeglass frames in a case, a burnt cellphone, a doll, a woman’s dusty shoe, and a “golf ball that sat on the desk of a stockbroker at Cantor Fitzgerald.”
Former Deputy Chief Jim Riches, whose 29-year-old firefighter son Jimmy was killed on 9/11, disputes that claim: “He wasn’t given special permission to remove what he wanted from the site,” Riches told the Post. “No one was.” Joe Soldevere, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Design and Construction, which was in charge of the WTC recovery, agreed, saying it did not “authorize anyone to take WTC artifacts.”
