Rediscovered Images from 9/11
On September 11, 2001, my wife and I were woken at about 9:00 by her mother, who told us to turn on CNN. We were newlyweds, living in a studio apartment on the Lower East Side. As soon as we saw the burning towers on TV, we left our apartment and headed down to the street.
Looking southwest from Grand and Henry, we had a direct view of the World Trade Center. We stood for a while and watched in shared horror as the towers burned, and then fell. Apparently, I had my camera with me and was taking pictures–a fact that the enormity of the events had erased from my memory.
But I recently found the pictures I took that day, buried in a box in my house, and seeing them again took my breath away. Here they are, for posterity. (Click on any image to get the full-sized scan.)
woooow. eerie, yet beautiful. its almost strange how there’s a feeling of serenity captured in the foreground where you are, just looking at the distant chaos… these are really moving, Jamie!
It’s hard to look at stuff like this. I remember when an old college friend of mine I hadn’t really been in contact with for a decade sent me some photos he took from his apartment across the street. He moved his family out of the country shortly afterwards. I have not spoken with him since. It is hard for me to imagine what happened.