Surfacing up from Wall Street subway station, you stand out from the roaming sea of people dressed in nothing but black and white; all walking at paces ten times faster than your own. It’s lunch time. Everyone has come out for a feed making visits to their local sandwich and soup hub – a popular cafeteria combo for Americans – before they scurry off into their office like mouses. And then, you are left almost with empty streets – a different scene from what you found yourself in just 30-minutes ago.

Zig-zagging your way into confusion between the tall buildings of New York’s financial district, you’ll eventually stumble along Broadway bumping into the Wall Street Bull, otherwise known as the ‘Charging Bull.’ Ever since the 1989 stock market crash, it has become an unintentional iconic statue that tourists just love to pose and take a picture with.

As you make your way following the signs towards Wall Street’s Stock Exchange the high level of security surrounding the building will become obvious. Armed officers all strapped with a bullet proof vests, have been on guard since 9/11 restricting tourist access into the building. But because you carry a camera in one hand and dress differently to the normal New Yorker, you have the ‘permission’ to gawk along the sidewalk of the Stock Exchange, symbolic of US capitalism.

Around the corner from this, is the plot of land of ground zero where the World Trade Centre (or Twin Towers) once stood. Currently, the place is a construction site where the staggering size of empty land will be a memorial park. For the meantime, marking the tragedy, an American flag has been erected flapping patriotically with the occasional breeze. It is an eerie scene despite visitors coming in hundreds to the site each day to pay their respects. It’s hard to not help but imagine how the city managed to recover...