This year marks 20 years since the terrorist attacks on September Eleventh. It is a day that looms grimly for those who witnessed with their own eyes the destruction, horror, and chaos of that day. It casts a shadow that creeps into the conscience of those who were not alive or old enough to understand the gravity of those events – nor how they would forever change modern American life. But as time pulls us farther from 2001, it is the image that we don’t see, that was decided upon us for the removal of offense, of hurt, of emotion that is the most important to connect us to a collective historic truth. It is the image of the Falling Man.Photojournalist Richard Drew had been on assignment with the Associated Press when he was dispatched to the Twin Towers. In minutes, his 12-frame sequence of the unknown man would be symbolic of the moment: at once a surreal image burned out of a nightmare contrasting with the ethereal sense of a quiet, intimate, moment. Tom Junod wrote of the image in his 2003
What Becomes of the Falling Man
What Becomes of the Falling Man
What Becomes of the Falling Man
This year marks 20 years since the terrorist attacks on September Eleventh. It is a day that looms grimly for those who witnessed with their own eyes the destruction, horror, and chaos of that day. It casts a shadow that creeps into the conscience of those who were not alive or old enough to understand the gravity of those events – nor how they would forever change modern American life. But as time pulls us farther from 2001, it is the image that we don’t see, that was decided upon us for the removal of offense, of hurt, of emotion that is the most important to connect us to a collective historic truth. It is the image of the Falling Man.Photojournalist Richard Drew had been on assignment with the Associated Press when he was dispatched to the Twin Towers. In minutes, his 12-frame sequence of the unknown man would be symbolic of the moment: at once a surreal image burned out of a nightmare contrasting with the ethereal sense of a quiet, intimate, moment. Tom Junod wrote of the image in his 2003