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The falling man
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[Originally posted September 11, 2007, at California Yankee.] Horrifying, yet mesmerizing, Richard Drew's photograph, 9/11: The Falling Man, evokes many powerful memories. From the Sydney Morning Herald:
Has the passing of time softened the impact? Shall we now more easily be able to watch images of that terrible day in New York when nearly 2800 people lost their lives in an unprecedented attack by two aircraft, the first into the North Tower at 8.46am and the second into the South Tower some 40 minutes later?
[. . .]
Next morning several newspapers published his picture, none more boldly than The Morning Call, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It brought howls of protest and would not be seen again.
Who was the falling man? Esquire journalist, Tom Junod, decided to try to find out:
THEY BEGAN JUMPING NOT LONG after the first plane hit the North Tower, not long after the fire started. They kept jumping until the tower fell. They jumped through windows already broken and then, later, through windows they broke themselves. They jumped to escape the smoke and the fire; they jumped when the ceilings fell and the floors collapsed; they jumped just to breathe once more before they died.
[. . .]
From the beginning, the spectacle of doomed people jumping from the upper floors of the World Trade Center resisted redemption. They were called "jumpers" or "the jumpers," as though they represented a new lemminglike class. The trial that hundreds endured in the building and then in the air became its own kind of trial for the thousands watching them from the ground.
Never Forget.
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