The following is a translation of an article originally published in Hungarian in Magyar Krónika.

Was it a symbol of the American dream? Or perhaps of American hubris? In fact, can dream and hubris even be separated from one another? What is certain is that the construction of the World Trade Center served more than just the practical aim of attracting investors and bringing new life to a South Manhattan that had become rather run-down by the 1960s. Embedded within the ostensibly practical, economically motivated goal of ‘modernization’ was—albeit unspoken—the promise of a civilizational statement. It is important not to forget just how unprecedented this historical moment was.

To use a somewhat strained example: the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were not erected as part of real estate development projects. The United States, however, had reached a point in its socio-economic ‘progress’ where capital had become both a force for creating symbols and the power that sustained them.

Of course, there were intellectual-historical antecedents reaching far back, but it was America that sanctified this value. And when we consider the architectural monstrosities of the City of London or the La Défense district in Paris, it becomes clear that this new civilizational value has, by now, overwritten all previous meanings and forms of ‘greatness’ on a global scale.

In the mid-1960s, after the demolition of Radio Row—an area filled with warehouses and shady deals—New York construction workers began building what would become the tallest building in the world. At that time, America was on the rise. It was still fuelled by the post-war optimism and driven forward by a momentum of abundance and success unparalleled in human history. By 1973, when the complex was completed, the general mood had already shifted significantly.

Political turbulence, the Vietnam War, and the oil crisis all pointed towards a darker and more uncertain world, and it was becoming increasingly less self-evident that America’s momentum would last forever. And yet, America would only reach its true peak after this: it won the Cold War.

‘Political turbulence, the Vietnam War, and the oil crisis all pointed towards a darker and more uncertain world’

The silhouette of the World Trade Center had aligned itself with the grand moment, rising triumphantly atop the cliff edge of history’s end. Think of Kevin from Home Alone 2, standing wide-eyed on the observation deck with his camera, or the fleeting shots of the towers in the opening credits of Friends. When the towers eventually collapsed, it did not mark the end of America’s historical era—as many still wish to believe. After all, its emerging rivals in the international order are more aptly described as civilizational epigones: they do not embody a clearly defined alternative vision of shared life, but rather offer less refined versions of the American experiment.

America’s values are global, and nothing significantly threatens their dominance. However, whether it will be able to offer the world another colossal symbol like the World Trade Center remains uncertain.

It is telling that the One World Trade Center, built on the site of the Twin Towers by 2013, carries no symbolic meaning, and most people would probably not even recognize it in a photograph.

A little-known Hungarian photographer, Balthazar Korab—also known as Boldizsár Koráb—was the one who perceived and conveyed the symbolic meaning in the World Trade Center, as he did in other iconic works of American modernist architecture. He captured a kind of capitalistic grandeur—if one may call it that—that today, when we view these images and cannot help but think of the terrible outcome, feels ominous and oppressive.

Born in 1926, Koráb originally aspired to become a painter, but under pressure from his banker father, he studied architecture in Budapest. Even so, it was his father who bought him his first camera—a Leica—from a retreating German soldier.

In the 1940s, Koráb emigrated to the West. He worked in the offices of Le Corbusier and later the Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, and increasingly dedicated himself to architectural and model photography. He received a steady stream of commissions to document the works of the world’s most prominent architects. As one acquaintance put it upon his death, Koráb—owing not least to his professional training—understood the intention embedded in architecture and, as a photographer, was able to capture it. That is a rare talent. After his death in 2013, his archive of 5,000 photographs was donated to the Library of Congress, which made the images publicly available online in high quality—and free to use.

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