I took these pictures from my roof that morning with a cheap little camera that still had some film left in it. I was getting dressed and listening to the radio when a bulletin announced that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. Thinking a Cessna flown by a drunken pilot crashed into Windows On The World, I ran upstairs to the roof to take a look. Seeing that this was a major catastrophe with black smoke billowing out of the North Tower, I ran downstairs and called my mother and brother in Dallas. They had not yet heard any news about the attack, and there was nothing yet on the teevee about it. I grabbed my camera and ran back upstairs where my neighbors in the building were already gathering. I arrived and began taking pictures just as the second plane struck the South Tower.
This is the first picture that I took from the roof of my building at 256 East 10th street.
Hundreds of people gathered on the rooftops of neighboring tenement buildings to watch the disaster unfold.
The second plane just struck and I instinctively began clicking the shutter button.
The film ran out before the towers collapsed.
How terrible it must have been to watch, Doug. Oh, what a horror!
ReplyDeleteIt was so tramatic watching on TV, to actualy be there must have been so much worse! I realise it was a HUGE thing, but still, how can we let it be the end all and be all of life now? Can't we work to honor those lost by making life better NOT by wallowing in the missery and continueing to be the victum? 10 years seems long enoug...how can we get better if we glorify and enshrine this terrible event?
ReplyDeletePeople need to remember, especially their dead.
ReplyDeleteIt's been more than 90 years since World War I ended, and yet commemoration ceremonies all over Europe are still deeply emotional events.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone ever bothers to read what I wrote in the previous posts, you'll see that I'm not wallowing in anything, but trying to make sense of what's happened since 9/11.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you posted them, Doug. Watching the film on TV on the day it happened was almost too polished--like a movie. The rawness of these images reminds us that there was nothing polished about it. And it is so sad tha we have allowed this event to destroy so much of what we valued.
ReplyDeleteThere was such good possible.... and we chose a path of fear.
Audrey and I are looking at these photos together on the eve of 9/11. It's overwhelming to see it from the viewpoint of our own dear friend Doug.
ReplyDeleteWhen you wrote that you instinctively kept clicking the shutter to take photos, Audrey exclaimed, "That's an artist for you!"