Maybach Mentoring: Documenting the Rebuilding of the World Trade Center

In 2008, the May­bach Foun­da­tion ini­ti­at­ed The World Trade Cen­ter Doc­u­men­tary Arts Project. Sil­ver­stein Prop­er­ties and the May­bach Foun­da­tion came togeth­er in giv­ing four pho­tog­ra­phers an oppor­tu­ni­ty to record the rede­vel­op­ment of the new World Trade Cen­ter tow­er in New York. The Foun­da­tion was able to bring in Joe Wool­head, the offi­cial pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the World Trade Cen­ter to be the offi­cial men­tor to the four pro­tégé pho­tog­ra­phers: Mari­ka Asa­tiani (Tbil­isi, Geor­gia), Ben­jamin Jarosch (New York, Unit­ed States), Nicole Tung (New York, Unit­ed States), and Vicky Roy (New Del­hi, India).

The young pho­tog­ra­phers learned to crit­i­cal­ly expose and doc­u­ment social­ly and polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive themes, how to express their unique per­spec­tives through their work and how to moti­vate their audi­ence into crit­i­cal thought. In addi­tion to the lead Men­tor Joe Wool­head, the Pro­teges worked with oth­er world-renowned pho­tog­ra­phers and co-men­tors includ­ing David Hand­schuh, Horst Hamann, David Humen Ken­ner­ly, and Dawn Shegge­by. The project was offi­cial­ly con­clud­ed with an exhib­it of the pho­tographs in New York.

The pro­jec­t’s objec­tive was to com­pelling­ly cap­ture the rebuild­ing of the World Trade Cen­ter tow­er. The project received sig­nif­i­cant inter­na­tion­al press cov­er­age and was offi­cial­ly con­clud­ed with an exhib­it of the pro­tégés‘ pho­tographs in New York City. Today, all four pro­tégés are active­ly giv­ing back to soci­ety through their pho­tog­ra­phy and their col­lec­tive work from this project is now fea­tured as a per­ma­nent exhib­it on the 7^th floor of the new­ly con­struct­ed One World Trade Center. 

Through these men­tor­ing projects, the May­bach Foun­da­tion sets out to enable young, tal­ent­ed indi­vid­u­als to exert influ­ence with their ideas and tal­ents. The Foun­da­tion’s method­ol­o­gy is based on the strong his­to­ry and tra­di­tion of pass­ing on knowl­edge, exper­tise and, last but not the least, a relent­less pur­suit of cre­at­ing new paths. In the recent years, this has nat­u­ral­ly giv­en rise to a new mis­sion: to resplen­dent­ly present the his­to­ry of the inge­nious design­ers Wil­helm and Karl May­bach, and build a bridge con­nect­ing this past with the future to pre­serve a sacred and time­less legacy. 

The May­bach lega­cy is a tes­ta­ment to the pow­er of mentoring.