For almost 40 years, Steve Mack knew he was close to home by looking for the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

"I know they were in New York and I've lived my whole life in Bayonne, but when I came from the shore or from the Turnpike, I looked for those towers to tell me I was close to home," he said.

As a photographer, Mack frequently used the Twin Towers in his work, and over the years has taken hundreds, if not thousands of images from every angle he could manage, framing other images against them such as one of the Statue of Liberty standing between the lighted towers at night.

A photographer in the past for the Bayonne Community News, Mack has taken a lot of pictures of the New Jersey waterfront, and over the years, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center became a symbolic element in his work.

"I took pictures from every side, from Weehawken, from Jersey City, and from Bayonne," he said. "Everywhere I went, whether it was on the New Jersey Turnpike or near the Holland Tunnel, I saw those Towers."

Some of these images are on display in Bayonne City Hall lobby for the month of September as personal memorial to those who perished on Sept. 11, 2001, and a tribute to those heroic figures who worked so hard in rescue efforts five years ago.

One of the images from the collection on display in City Hall was included in the reception program for the 2002 premier of a HBO documentary of 9/11 events. The picture that appears in the HBO invitation depicting the Statue of Liberty standing between the two towers was taken from New York Harbor.

"I've lived with the towers for 40 years," he said. "Born and raised in Bayonne, my room when I was young faced east. So I saw the towers when they were going up."

Sadly, he said, he also saw the towers come down, a remarkably painful chapter of his life, partly because the images played such an important role in art, but more significantly because he knew or knew of some of the victims. He said he felt the incredible pang of loss caused by the deaths of nearly 3,000 people. More than a dozen of the victims were from Bayonne.

The photos

All but two of the photos currently on display in City Hall are pre-9/11 images of the Twin Towers site. Included in the collection, however, are two important images of post 9/11: the Tower of Lights memorial that was on display for a short time after the disaster, and the image of the girders that made the shape of a cross.

Mack, of course, is not through with the display, and has plans to add a 9/11 American flag in which the names of the victims are inscribed, and has already taken a trip to Shakerville to take pictures there. Two of the passengers on one of the downed planes were residents of Bayonne at the time of the crash.

Mack said he has already met with fire officials at the site, and intends to return to the Pennsylvania town to take more photos, some of which he hopes to add to the display.

Stephen Mack, 46, was born and raised in Bayonne, and though he works for Verizon by day, he has been making steady progress as a professional photographer on his off hours, and, he says, would give up Verizon in a moment if he thought he could make a living with his photography. Mostly self taught, he said he attended a course as the School of Visual Arts in New York City.