9/11 survivor Thomas Haddad’s wildly diverse, frequently phantasmagorical “drawings from the bus” have the mythic detailing of a tarot deck, but also an exaggerated, grotesque quality resonant with underground comics and the work of Ralph Steadman and Gerald Scarfe.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Haddad was at work as a design director, his office just 30 feet below the site of impact. “As a visual person, the events of 9/11 were overwhelming and I began to shut down,” he writes. “Thankfully my wife had the insight to recognize that I needed to refocus myself … So she bought me a sketchbook and suggested that I use it as a diary in pictures.”
The Fabulist is honored to share a few of these deeply personal, strangely beautiful works.
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