Most memorials are made of stone. They are hefty, polished, and persistent, as if permanence might keep us from forgetting. Images of Infamy by Steve Sandberg is the reverse of that. It doesn’t provide us with shiny marble or a clean ending. It gives us rough lines, black and crimson smudges, and drawings that appear to have been made in the midst of a fire. You can see that this is not a monument visible from a distance. This is memory in its most basic form, untidy and close enough to hurt.
The memoir is strange since it doesn’t follow the conventional way of remembering things. We usually see 9/11 in sad pictures, inscribed names, and speeches at ceremonies. Sandberg takes that same experience and breaks it open, allowing the pain, rage, and confusion to flow out onto the page. There is no effort to improve it. Instead, his art asks the brave question: what if we recalled tragedy as it really was unsteady, unpleasant, and unresolved?
The drawings hit you right away. They look like posters: bold, graphic, and nearly in-your-face. The palette consists of only black, white, and red hues, with a few additional colors scattered throughout. The lines cut through the page like they want to cut through the quiet. The repetitions are what actually stick. Planes, buildings, stars, and crosses keep coming back, like nightmares that won’t go away. And then there are the digits, 9 and 11, which look like ghostly signatures sewn into the painting. They aren’t slogans or hashtags; they’re anchors that remind us that this isn’t an abstract tragedy but a very real wound.
Some of the pictures are hard to look at. Some are really uncomfortable. Some show the criminals in ways that make them seem strange, horrible, or perhaps from another universe. We can’t relax with that choice. It makes us think about how we show the people who are to blame. Is turning them into monsters a means to make sense of violence, or does it make us too far away from the genuine problems that violence causes? It provokes either way, and that’s the point. Art isn’t always there to make you feel better. Sometimes its function is to poke at us and make us face things we don’t want to talk about.
But what amazed me the most was how vital the captions are. Each painting has only a line or two, a few short, clipped lines that change how you interpret the picture. The art could become unclear without them. With them, the task becomes sharper and more collaborative, rather than being done alone. It feels like Sandberg is right next to you, saying the thought he had while he was drawing. In that whisper, grief becomes a language we all speak.
The novel moves in stages, like a journey that you don’t realize you’re on until you look back and see the whole thing. It starts with chaos, plates where planes and towers crash into each other in violent diagonals, and even the sky appears to be torn apart. Then it turns into sadness, with windows that cry and walls that crumble under the weight of grief. It also points fingers at extremists later on, converting symbols of ideology into images of accusation. And then, softly, a change comes. The pictures stop yelling and start paying attention. They make room for memories and thinking. And in the last few pages, there is something unexpected: hope. Not loud or showy, but a kind of quiet strength, as if the most radical message is that survival is enough.
That arc is essential because it is like what memory does. We don’t stay in one feeling for long. Trauma changes, sorrow changes, and resilience comes in when we least expect it. Sandberg shows that communal memory isn’t just one thing; it’s broken, layered, and reconstructed over and over again by juxtaposing all these stages.
It’s not simply the depiction of 9/11 that sticks with me when I finish the memoir. It’s a reminder that memory is fragile and raw. We tend to think of history as something we can agree on and settle. Images of Infamy, on the other hand, suggests that memory is continually being altered. Sometimes it’s in stone, and other times it’s in ink and fire. And we can find a truth in those broken, muddy sketches that polished monuments can’t show us. So no, this isn’t the kind of memorial that will stand tall in a public plaza. Not everyone will feel better. However, it does something unusual: it lets us into the messy and painful process of remembering that isn’t yet complete. Sandberg’s work not only tells us what happened on September 11 but also sheds light on the aftermath. It tells us how we carry it, broken and restless, yet somehow enduring.