Kent Kobersteen, former Director of Photography of National Geographic
"The pictures are by Robert Clark, and were shot from the window of his studio in Brooklyn. Others shot the second plane hitting the tower, but I think there are elements in Clark's photographs that make them special. To me the wider shots not only give context to the tragedy, but also portray the normalcy of the day in every respect except at the Towers. I generally prefer tighter shots, but in this case I think the overall context of Manhattan makes a stronger image. And, the fact that Clark shot the pictures from his studio indicates how the events of 9/11 literally hit home. I find these images very compelling—in fact, whenever I see them they force me to study them in great detail."Robert Clark—INSTITUTE
On September 11, 2001, photography editors across the world, overcome with a deluge of devastating imagery, faced the daunting task of selecting photos that would go on to define a catastrophe like no other. A decade later, TIME asked a wide variety of the industry’s leading photo editors, photographers, authors, educators, and bloggers to tell us which image moved them most—and why.
Some couldn’t choose one single image. Vin Alabiso, head of photography at the Associated Press on September 11, 2001, said, “Of the thousands of images that were captured, I thought only a handful would truly resonate with me. I was wrong. As a document of a day filled with horror and heroism, the collective work of so many professionals and amateurs leaves its own indelible mark on our memory.”
Holly Hughes, editor of Photo District News, said she was moved most by the photographs of the missing people that blanketed the city in the days after 9/11. “The images that can still move me to tears are the snapshots of happy, smiling people looking out from the homemade missing posters that were taped to signposts and doorways and mailboxes,” she said. “How those posters were made, the state of mind of the people who stood at Xerox machines to make copies, it’s too painful to contemplate. Those flyers stayed up around the city for weeks, through wind and rain, and became entwined with the sorrow and anxiety we carried with us day after day.”
Alabiso added, “A decade later, I could only wish that the most memorable photo of September 11, 2001, would not have been memorable at all…simply two towers silhouetted against a clear azure-blue sky.”
To visit TIME’s Beyond 9/11: A Portrait of Resilience, a project that chronicles 9/11 and its aftermath, click here.
Kent Kobersteen, former Director of Photography of National Geographic
"The pictures are by Robert Clark, and were shot from the window of his studio in Brooklyn. Others shot the second plane hitting the tower, but I think there are elements in Clark's photographs that make them special. To me the wider shots not only give context to the tragedy, but also portray the normalcy of the day in every respect except at the Towers. I generally prefer tighter shots, but in this case I think the overall context of Manhattan makes a stronger image. And, the fact that Clark shot the pictures from his studio indicates how the events of 9/11 literally hit home. I find these images very compelling—in fact, whenever I see them they force me to study them in great detail."Robert Clark—INSTITUTEMaryAnne Golon, photo editor and media consultant; former Director of Photography of TIME
"James Nachtwey's photograph here of one tiny New York City fireman making his way through the inferno that was once the World Trade Center towers is forever seared into my memory from the darkest day in American history, 9/11/2001. Later on that evening, Jim, completely covered in ash from the fallen World Trade Center towers, arrived in person at the Time and Life building in midtown Manhattan to deliver his exposed film to his waiting editors. While his film was being processed, he drank a large bottle of water, and slumped exhausted in a dark green chair in the Time photo department hallway. The following morning, the imprint of his body on the chair and his dusty footprints were still there. Then editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine and his deputy, John Huey, came by to see where the great photographer had walked. James Kelly, the finest news magazine editor in America, chose to run many of Jim's pictures in the 9/11 black-bordered issue of TIME Magazine that memorialized that tragic event. I was honored to have been the picture editor of that edition and to be the first person in the world to have seen Jim's haunting work. It took months for me to grieve as a human being. I was working 80-hour weeks to do my job as a journalist. Jim's work comforted me and helped many Americans to process the hideous aftermath of those horrendous days. Thank you, Jim Nachtwey."James Nachtwey for TIMEKira Pollack, Director of Photography of TIME;
former Associate Photo Editor of The New York Times Magazine
"On one of the days following the attack on the World Trade Center—I think it was the 13th—I walked uptown from my home in the West Village to Magnum's offices on 25th street to look at Steve McCurry's work, which I viewed on a light table. I was looking through the loupe and the pictures he had made were truly haunting. There was a picture of an escalator covered with papers and debris. It looked like the kind of apocalyptic ruin that would have happened over decades or centuries but it had happened in a single morning. You could feel the emptiness where the people were supposed to be. I viewed McCurry's chromes on a light box. It's amazing, looking back on it now, that none of the photographers we worked with were shooting digital. It was all film and that meant that it had to be transported by people from point to point at a time when most transportation was either restricted or shut down. I hand-carried a selection of chromes up to the offices at The New York Times and it was one of the pictures in the mix for several days being discussed by then editor Adam Moss, photo director Kathy Ryan, deputy photo editor Jody Quon and then art director Janet Froelich. The image was published in The New York Times Magazine in its 9/11 issue."Steve McCurry—MagnumElisabeth Biondi, former Visuals Editor of The New Yorker
"The picture Gilles Peress took for The New Yorker is indelibly burned into my mind. It was then after the devastating event and it is now, 10 years after. When I think of that day, I remember calling Gilles on his cell right after the first tower had been hit asking him to get to Ground Zero. Come to think of it, the word had not as yet been coined. His reply was that he was already on the bridge. The result was an extraordinary set of photographs which we published in our special issue with the famous black cover by Art Spiegelman. It came out on the Monday directly following the attack. Then and as now, I live in Tribeca near Ground Zero which meant my life had been changed for a long time. At the beginning, it reminded me of the stories my mother told me about World War II. All seemed to be a dark, foul smelling haze and I heard fire sirens day and night. I used to be able to see the towers from my roof. I felt their absence and I yearned to see what was left. I could not. It was sealed off on Guiliani's orders. Gilles' amazing pictures filled the void. They are still with me."Gilles Peress—MagnumJody Quon, Photography Director of New York;
formerly Deputy Photo Editor of The New York Times Magazine
"It is virtually impossible to not be moved by any image or document that pertains to 9/11. While sifting through countless photos—pausing, feeling, remembering at each flip of a page—I (surprisingly) found myself profoundly moved by a detail of an image: the burning smoke of the towers. The smoke became clouds, and the clouds became those whom we will never forget. This became the cover of our commemorative issue."David Surowiecki—Getty Images
JodyOlivier Picard, photo editor and photographer; former
Director of Photography for U.S. News and World Report
“Since we were based in Washington, D.C., we had no communication with New York for the first couple of hours. The deadline for closing our special issue was the next day. I didn’t sleep. We published an image by freelance photographer Patrick Witty that for me best evokes that tumultuous morning. It is 9:59 a.m. and New Yorkers witness the collapse of the South Tower. Their reaction was mine. Immediate. Disbelief. Raw. Violent.” Patrick WittySimon Barnett, Director of Photography of LIFE.com;
former Deputy Director of Photography of Newsweek
"In a manner of speaking, after the insanity and bedlam and brutality of 9/11, the morning that followed came as something of a surprise. You felt as is if the sun wouldn't rise in the quite the same way. Jonathan Torgovnik made this photograph on Sept. 12. While it doesn't have a soundtrack it is an incredibly quiet picture (although I'm sure the audible reality may well have been different). It forms a bridge between pre and post-9/11—an office that most of us can relate to, have visited, or worked in–against a spectacularly lit backdrop of heinous devastation. 9/11 was the photographic event of all-time; so immense that it was tough to get grounded in, to take measure of, to begin to believe what had happened. This picture does that."Jonathan Torgovnik—Reportage by Getty ImagesPatrick Witty, International Picture Editor of TIME;
former freelance photographer
"After the towers fell, I walked back to my apartment on the Lower East Side, completely in a daze. I had shot black and white film that morning and there was a small lab in the kitchen of my neighbor’s apartment where I could process and scan. When I walked inside, covered in dust and a ripped t-shirt, my neighbors were there and we looked at each other in silence, in disbelief. Another photographer was there who I didn’t know, named David Surowiecki. At the time he was an editor at Getty Images, along with my old roommate Craig Allen. David and Craig were scanning film and transmitting the images from the apartment since Getty’s offices had been evacuated. David’s film from the morning was on a light table near the film dryer in the kitchen. I started looking at his film with a loupe and will never forget the feeling of despair when I saw this one particular image. It was a bizarre and terrifying, yet almost calm image, split down the middle with four tiny bodies falling to the ground. I saw bodies falling when I was near the burning towers, but I didn’t shoot it myself. I couldn’t.David Surowiecki—Getty ImagesAlison Morley, Chair of the Documentary Photography and Photojournalism Program
at The International Center of Photography; former Picture Editor of
The New York Times Sophisticated Traveler Magazine
"Gary Fabiano's photograph of the man under the tower comes to mind first. The shock of seeing that man immobilized by the flash, coming out of the darkness with his arm raised and eyes, glazed and suspended always remains with me. The back story makes it even more compelling when you learn that the fireman asked the photographer to use his flash to help light their way out of the garage where a group of people and firemen had gotten caught. The man was just inches away from the camera but all sense of space and distance was lost in such absolute blackness."Gary Fabiano—Sipa PressMichel duCille, Director of Photography of The Washington Post
"This image holds a serene quality for me. The early morning amber light is hardly visible through the hazy smoke filled scene. The lone firefighter stands framed in miniature by the shell of broken steel beams, it is all that is left of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Yoni's photograph has always stuck with me because I get a deep sense of loneliness. The leaning beams overhead adds a dramatic contrast to the fireman. The task before him seems daunting. The melancholy look of the figure silhouetted between the broken steel beams, feels burdensome and reinforces the weigh of this tragedy on the nation's shoulders."Yoni BrookFred Ritchin, director of PixelPress and author of After Photography
"A few days after the attacks of Sept. 11, at pixelpress.org we encouraged people from around the world to send in imagery or text responding to the events. One of the most affecting to me was by a photographer in Boston, Michal Hardoof-Raz, who simply sent in nine images of dust. To me that was the contribution that best expressed the desolation that we were all feeling—nothing was left, so much was invisible, the pain would be permanent."Michal Hardoof-RazJörg Colberg, editor of the photography blog Conscientious
"There is a photograph of a lone office worker by Stan Honda walking home (presumably), holding a piece of cloth in front of his mouth and nose, his clothes covered with dust from the towers. It's impossible for me to imagine what must have gone through the man's mind, I'm assuming he was struggling to comprehend what he had just seen and experienced. But I've always thought that this photo really expressed what so many people were feeling, who had not been in New York that day, but who were deeply affected by what happened: This mix of shock, horror, and sorrow."Stan Honda—AFP/Getty ImagesMagdalena Herrera, Director of Photography of GEO Magazine;
former Art and Photography Director of National Geographic France
"A man, as an acrobatic diver, is falling. He seems so quiet heading straight to death. What's in his mind?"Richard Drew—dapdJeremiah Bogert, Picture Editor at The Los Angeles Times;
former Assignment Editor at The New York Times.
“We sent a few photographers out to emergency rooms and it was so scary and sad when it became clear that there would be very few patients. We had hundreds of people line up outside the Times building with their own photos. I would say that Angel's photo of the women looking at towards the World Trade Center affected me the most that day. Because you can’t see what exactly they are looking at, your mind starts filling in the blanks with an amalgam of imagery made up of what you had already seen. Also, the woman on the left wears an expression of concern and fear which is made more powerful by the woman on the right who is covering her eyes.”Angel Franco—The New York Times/ReduxDavid Friend, editor at Vanity Fair and author of the book, Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11
“Wolfgang was doing an art project in which he was taking, with a fixed camera in Brooklyn, a panorama of the New York skyline. And every four seconds it would tick off and over the internet he would send, to a gallery in New York, a 22 x 9 foot mural projecting the image of downtown Manhattan. And it would refresh every four seconds. As Wolfgang said, ‘History high jacked art. Reality high jacked art’. And suddenly he recorded this transformation of New York—mass destruction and death. It’s a sense of no art or expression exists without its toehold in reality." A revised edition of Watching the World Change was just published with a preface on the roles that images and social media have played in documenting news events since 9/11.Wolfgang Staehle, courtesy of the artist, from "Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11"Alex Webb, photographer
"My wife Rebecca's and my first glimpse of lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001 was from a rooftop in Brooklyn Heights. That's where I took––probably on my first roll of film that day—what I consider my one singular image from Sept. 11—a mother and child with the smoldering ruins of the Twin Towers behind. It's a picture, in retrospect, that seems to me to suggest something about how life goes on in the midst of tragedy. Perhaps it also raises questions about what kind of future world awaits the child—and all of us. One reason this photograph continues to resonate with me is that the situation was different from violence that I'd witnessed in the past in places such as Haiti or Beirut. On September 11, 2001, not only was I photographing this particular mother and child in the city in which I lived, I was also aware of—out of the corner of my eye—another woman, my wife, the poet and photographer Rebecca Norris Webb. About an hour earlier and a few miles away in our apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, we were holding each other as we watched the second plane hit the second tower on our small TV. When I started to rush out the door with my cameras to head towards Manhattan, Rebecca—a photographer who has had little experience photographing conflict or violence—said she wanted to go with me. I balked. Shouldn't she stay in Brooklyn, away from the chaos of lower Manhattan? Perhaps I shouldn't even go—a startling notion for a photographer like myself who has covered situations of conflict in the past? And what might happen next to our city on that terrible morning? What if we were separated and unable to communicate during another wave of violence? Amid the chaos and the uncertainty, we chose to stay together and do one of the few things we know how to do—respond with a camera. Looking back ten years later, I'm not sure I would have seen this particular photograph—with its note of tenderness and looming tragedy—if Rebecca had not been with me."Alex Webb—MagnumRobert Clark, photographer
"When I look at all the pictures from the coverage of 9/11, I keep coming back to this one. I think that this is a very powerful image, it seems to tell the whole story of the people who had to run for their lives. It is a stripped down image of the event, I see pure emotion, fear, tragedy. It some how seems to be very honest, the fact that it is in black & white reminds me of the way lower Manhattan looked that day. It shows the damage in human terms, my image (Robert Clark made photographs on 9/11) is a bit detached and an over-all shoot of the event, the other image is one that shows fear, pain, lose. The human factor."Gulnara Samoilova—APAlice Rose George, curator, photo editor, educator and one of the four founders of Here is New York: A Democracy of Photographs"
"I was in Portugal when it happened. It was horrible not to be in New York. It took me a week to get back and immediately we started the store front gallery for photographers and anyone who had used a camera to deal with the tragedy. We were given thousands and thousands of pictures which we hung on clothes lines and sold digital prints of, giving the money to the Childrens Aid Society. There are many images that stick in my mind. The planes going into the buildings, image after image, never fail to shock me. The individual faces, the ash, the ruins, and then the bodies falling from the tower (David Surowiecki's photograph)—the horror of those realities, conveyed in picture after picture, is profound and moves me still."David Surowiecki—Getty ImagesJames Collins, Associated Press Photo Desk Supervisor
"One of the most memorable photos from Sept. 11 is actually from the night of Sept. 12, by Beth Keiser. It’s nearly 36 hr. after the attacks and it’s probably around the time the reality of what had happened really began to sink in with me. Like many other journalists, on the actual day—the 11th, I was caught up shooting pictures, at first, and then later working on the desk through the night. Beth’s picture makes me think of that moment that occurred for a lot of us, in the days, or maybe weeks after, when we stopped and thought, 'my God, what happened here?' The silhouetted shapes of Trade Center wreckage rising ghost-like in the background are positively haunting. We recognize their form from the buildings that once soared over downtown Manhattan, but that’s all been supplanted by a new reality. The cops in the foreground stand weary and solemn – they’ve already seen too much. Their paper masks are a flimsy and perhaps futile protection against more horror to come—the dust and smoldering fallout that hung in the air for months."BETH A. KEISER—APSpencer Platt, staff photographer, Getty Images
"For me there are a certain number of images from September 11 that have become locked in our collective conscience and seem to define the event for historical purposes. While that is to be expected, there are many images from both professional and amateur photographers that have not received the attention they deserved at the time. One of those images was from my late colleague Chris Hondros of Getty Images. Chris, who was in Pittsburgh on the day of the attack and had to race back to New York in a mad all-night drive, managed to bring his uniquely sensitive and honest perspective to the story. I had thought by the time Chris had arrived into lower Manhattan that the opportunity for strong images from Ground Zero had past. Chris spent day and night crawling through the rubble while evading the police who had set up a virtual ring of steel around the site. In the quiet moments between dusk and dawn he was able to capture images that revealed the sublime and timeless nature of the tragedy. The firefighter sleeping in the morning light on a pile of rubble was an image I didn’t see until years later. But it is a picture that immediately carries me back to those days when, caked in dust, we worked 24-hour shifts, smelled of wet concrete and death and had world wariness for the first time in our lives. When you first see the image your mind interprets it as the death of a firefighter, as a man who has become one with a landscape of destruction and waste. But on closer inspection you realize that the man is sleeping on the rubble after a night of searching for his lost comrades. It is an image that could have come from the battlefields of the Civil War or the French trenches of World War I. These images can’t be staged or thought out; they only come to those journalists who stealthily wander through battlefields seeking out the truth. Chris intrinsically knew this was his story, that this event would come to shape his life and define him as a photographer. Only days after taking this picture Chris would board a flight to Pakistan to follow the story to its next field of battle. In the following years he followed the trajectory of the events stemming from that day more than anyone I know."Chris Hondros—Getty ImagesDavid Handschuh, staff photographer, New York Daily News
"The funeral for World Trade Center victim 001, Father Mychal Judge, was the first public mourning for a victim of 9/11. A good man, a religious man, and probably a symbol for the loss of that horrible day, his funeral brought former President Bill and first lady Hillary Clinton, hundreds of uniformed rescuers, tearful civilians and New York Daily News photographer Linda Rosier to the small midtown Manhattan church where “Father Mike” tended to his diverse flock. As his casket was removed from the chapel, Rosier spotted the woeful firefighter in the crowd. His gloved right hand in a final salute, you can feel the firefighters cheek quivering as he tries to keep tears from rolling down his face. For me, this image singularly sums up the hurt of a rescuer, a city, a country and the weight that the world felt, knowing how much had changed, in just a few minutes on a beautiful end of summer morning."Linda Rosier—NY Daily News Archive/Getty ImagesJoel Meyerowitz, photographer
"It was a stunning fall afternoon. As I stood there – the sun warm on my back, the air so clear, the colors so intense – it felt good to be alive. Instantly I felt the the shame of that involuntary sensation, as I remembered that I was standing among the dead. It was a defining moment for me. Do I make a photograph of this, or should I let it go? But if I don’t make a photograph, what am I doing here? As I watched sunlight and shadow pass in waves over the site, I thought about nature’s indifference to our passage on earth. Throughout history, great tragedies have happened on days like this. And yet it is often nature and time that help move us away from grief, and grant us perspective and hope. I decided to set up my camera."Joel Meyerowitz
