Brace for Impact, on Vanity Fair!

The Vanity Fair slideshow is here   thank you to everyone who has made this exhibition possible, I am happy beyond belief.

Brace for Impact: The Aftermath of Flight 1549

by Feifei Sun

September 14, 2009, 5:58 pm

Of all the guests who gathered at the Front Room, in Brooklyn, last Saturday for the opening reception of photographer Stephen Mallon’s exhibition, “Brace for Impact: The Aftermath of Flight 1549,” perhaps the most notable was Denise Lockie—a passenger on the US Airways plane that crashed into the Hudson River last January.

“The reality is overwhelming,” she said of Mallon’s large-scale photographs, which detail the salvage of the plane from the water in the weeks that followed. “Knowing what we went through that day, and the emotions from everything that happened, it’s hard for me to walk through and look at the damage to the aircraft. I don’t think people realize how much damage was done to the plane.”

Mallon got the call to photograph the salvage from Weeks Marine, the crane company hired for the rescue. He spent two weeks with the company, as well as with various federal agents and firemen. “It was an exhilarating and beautiful process, but every once in a while, it’d hit me that there was a plane in the water,” he said.

"Brace for Impact: The Aftermath of Flight 1549" is on display through October 11. Herewith, a slide show of images from the show.


Stephen Mallon at the opening reception of his exhibition at the Front Room in Brooklyn.Photograph by Ingrid Hertfelder.