Excerpts from a story at the
Motherboard section of Vice:
The events of 9/11 remain the most photographed in history. It’s
from out of that mass witness and record that one image, the 9/11
photograph that still hardly anyone has ever seen, seemed to challenge
our deepest notions of not only what it meant to die – and eventually be
partially reconstructed – in the new data age, but what confronting
death, as witnesses or consumers of information, said about ourselves as witnesses
or consumers of information. Making it all the more arresting, perhaps,
was its stark, almost calm anonymity. Nobody had a clue as to who the
photo’s subject, seen plummeting from the very top of the North Tower,
could be. Countless newspapers and wires ran the image the following
morning, but almost immediately got so much shit from readers that for
most outlets there became no other option but to pull the photo. Eleven
years on, the Falling Man is still suspended.
In deference to the sensitivities of some readers, I'll place the photo and some additional text below the fold...
Richard Drew, a photojournalist on assignment with the Associated Press
who had been preparing to photograph a fashion show that morning but who
was quickly dispatched to the towers by his editor, managed to snap a
12-frame sequence of the figure in free fall...
But of the dozen frames in Drew’s otherwise chaotic, painfully mortal
sequence, one stands apart. It’s a quiet, intimate image. And
compositionally sound: the “jumper” is upside down, perfectly vertical,
straddling the upper third of the frame and splitting the North and
South Towers...
Drew’s image ran the morning of Sept. 12 on page seven of The New York
Times, as well as in countless papers across the country and the world... Readers were incensed. Had the press no decency? Tasteless, crass,
voyeuristic. From the Times to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, dailies
pulled the image and were forced to go on the immediate defensive as
they wiped the image from their online records... But mostly the image hasn’t been seen in print since 2001. Drew has called it “the most famous photograph no one has seen.”
You can finish reading the story at
Vice.
Since it's been 10+ years, Can we can start to speak about it in "where were you when" term?
ReplyDeleteIt was my second year in university. When the first plane hit, or more exactly the news of it hit us, I was on a software engineering lecture. The class was cut short and we scrambled in front of a tv screen. This wasn't the twitter/facebook etc. era, but still I got most of my up to date information from IRC.
And of course I should add this was in Finland.
ReplyDeleteI can't get to Vice while @ work, but will read the rest at home. Esquire magazine had a profound article about The Falling Man soon after 9/11. Speculation on his identity and the public outcry about the image being published. In 2001 I worked in an elementary school and our counselor told me his decision was a sign of ‘good mental health’ because he was in a horrific situation and chose to jump rather than face an even worse fate. That concept still makes me shudder. On September 12th not a single kid that had come to the U.S.A. from Bosnia was in school. They must have felt a war was starting here.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure "good mental health" is an accurate insight, but I will say that it means that the guy had his wits about him and was someone who probably believed in controlling his own destiny. Unless it was just a panicked jump from something so terrifying that the body didn't let the mind have time to rationalize. We will likely never know, though. Either way, it seems to me that the loneliness, anger, hopelessness and fear would be crushing. I can imagine worse ways to die, I suppose, but this is certainly awful.
ReplyDeleteI can't remember where I originally read this, it may have been here, but this is supposedly just a chance photo. The man isn't as calm and content with with his decision as this image suggests.
ReplyDeleteIt is appointed to men once to die, then after this, the judgment. Hebrews
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately. What a way to go.
The decision must have terrible.
ReplyDeleteBurn to death relatively slowly and painfully on high or plunge to a slightly delayed but certainly instantaneous end.
I can see the logic. The fall the does not kill you, it's the sudden stop at the bottom does, one wonders what goes through the mind during that time.
I understood this was the brother of the 'army guy' from The Village People. I still find it very hard to look at. :-\
ReplyDeleteThis article first wrongly identifies it as one man though upon further investigation it was concluded it was most likely Jonathan Briley. Nobody knows for sure.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d39_1235589975
For me, it was not until I saw the documentary taken by the two French brothers filming the Fire Department of New York that I realized how horrible things were up near the top of the two towers. During the disaster, one of the brothers was inside one of the towers at the Fire Command Center, filming, and you keep hearing loud bangs, but everyone was ignoring them. Then one of the Fire Department Commanders remarked that the bangs were the sudden end of people either leaping for, or falling from one of the towers; he also remarked that the conditions for the people up high in the towers must have been horrific to cause so many people to take their lives.
ReplyDeleteFrightening.
Also, in one episode of the TV show THIRD WATCH (which had quite the arc around 9/11), one of the characters mentioned seeing women jumping from one of the towers, and holding down their dresses while falling to their death. Is it possible that the jumper above is/was female? Yes, the individual appears to be bald, but if she had been suffering from cancer, and going through kemo, then she could have lost her hair. And by diving head-first, she prevented her top from climbing up, thusly preserving her modesty, what little of it she still had.
ReplyDeleteThis reportedly was in no way a controlled head-first dive. This photo is a fortuitous composition from a set of a dozen photos of the same jumper tumbling wildly out of control on the way down (see the text at the link).
DeleteI worked for a firm that was involved in the recovery effort, I worked in our publlications department and was tasked with sifting through the photo pool of images from the site being shared by many companies,government agencies, and media sources to catalog our teams photos and related photos. The horror show that revealed there was beyond description.
ReplyDeleteWe would live in a very different world now if the media didn't yield to outcries and self censorship. The restraint practiced by the hunders/thousands who had access to those images is remarkable. Our civilization would have been undone and we would have to endure the aftermath of deeper rage and grief.
Some day I'd like to hear your view on government censorship and media self-censorship of war-related photos and how such might influence the public's acceptance of their countries being at war.
DeleteThe censorhip, release, and propaganda manipulation of images and film can turn the tide of history. "With The Marines at Tarawa" is a prime example; it's purpose was to explain war was difficult and those fighting truely were and it would be a costly war in time and bodies, no one who hadn't personally seen the elephant had seen anything of the sort. The reaction of the nation was not to shrink from war.
DeleteAn iconic image of the war in vietnam showed a priosner being executed in the street by a southern vietnamese officer, this underminded a lot of support for the war and boosted the anti-war movement. The story of that incident was deeper and more tragic what was precieved as an image of the enduring brutality of war was how war really breaks people as the shooter was avenging the murder of his god-children who had be killed earlier. War becomes as personal targadey for everyone it grinds under it's treads.
Unrestrained or guided release of images from 9/11 of the true horrors of the day may have unleashed an unrestrainable tide of hate and violence that would have left us asking "How could we have done that?" for generations. As much as we pretend we are not far removed from concentration camps, and setting cities aflame.
Hard as it is to look at, we need to see the world as it is and not as an ostrich does.
ReplyDeleteWhile I do not believe it is the same series of photos (given the quick but hardly thorough research I have done online), a similar set is shown at the end of the book "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" but in reverse, so a man is falling up. Given the story of the book, I found myself immensely touched by this unusual, thoughtful move.
ReplyDeleteThank you for putting this below the fold. I have deliberately avoided this photo ever since it was posted. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThere is a documentary that I saw with a title something like "The man in the picture " or " The falling man" and they interviewed a family member... sad story.
ReplyDeleteHow can a photo that I have seen numerous times from different sources be cited as an example of censorship?
ReplyDeleteDo most people really only have one source for their news?