Last night Channel 4 showed a documentary on 9/11 which centred around the images of that horrific autumn day. Specifically the 'Falling Man' (also covered in Esquire above). To me the images of people gathered at the top of the WTC hanging out of one of the worlds tallest buildings trying to breath seemed so surreal yet oddly relatable that they managed to truly capture the total horror of the events that morning. The discrepancies of scale, the sinister gothic buildings, their suits and ties. I never liked the WTC when I had the chance to visit. There were several elevator shafts to take you to the top. The building swayed. I felt unsafe and refused to go up to the glass where, my sister informed me, a helicopter was hovering hundreds of feet BELOW us.

The Pulitzer prize winning photographer of this 9/11 image is no stranger to history, as the article notes. He was there when Bobby Kennedy was shot. There is something unsettling about a photographer who can shoot a role of film that documents what is essentially a man moments before his death. I cant for example fully comprehend how the photographer of this famine image was able to take his photo and walk away doing nothing to help that child. That’s an impossible reaction and not one I would have had. He later regretted his actions but stated as a reason that the aid agencies had advised the victims were ‘disease ridden’. It became a Pulitzer prize winning image. Is that documenting history, sick voyeurism or a hunt for glory with a veneer of an excuse?

The Cambodian image is another Pulitzer winner. The image also captures a man nanoseconds before death and freezes it. . His photograph captures history, speaks louder than words. It all feels very uncomfortable.

The Channel 4 footage shows people in real time falling to their deaths that day. Other than the humbling interviews with the relatives, it left me feeling angry. Angry with the overriding suggested angle of the programme that America buries what is uncomfortable and unheroic and that this is a ‘failure’. I didn’t feel that was the case. To a degree maybe. But those images are the last seconds in a fight for life. They are simply too raw, too personal to the families involved. What baffled me was the obsession some journalists had with finding out who the falling man was. What purpose does that serve. Im almost relieved that there was no certainty in his identification and that he remains unidentified now.

Falling Man

Its natural that the US wants images of heroic rescuers raising the flag in the ruins to be the world images that circulate in a time of war. Recently I saw a picture of the London Blitz. It showed a dead woman in a suit on the pavement lying in the rubble following a lunchtime bombing raid. Her legs looked awkward, her clothes awry. Her dignity gone. An airraid warden was checking to see if she was alive. She looked so ordinary and relatable. It was so real. Im sure such images were not publicized during the war even though this was unusual, a great city under attack by air raid for the first time in its history, in any history, its civilians being slaughtered. It is certainly not an image I will forget in a hurry (I couldn’t find it on the net) and it is not one I was ever shown at school or college or in museums.

I do really wonder if there isnt a part of the msm that continues to bury its own images not because they are uncomfortable to look at but because you would feel the way you should? After all in this case if it’s a failure story to beat up the Americans, then im sure the world media would readily oblige. Abu Ghraib is a daily front piece. The msm has never recoiled from horror before.

Why the silence? Because you might end up like me last night, in tears, hot with anger and unable to sleep, reminded of my reaction that day. When I walked to work this morning it still hadn’t disappeared, that sick feeling of anger I felt time and again in the 70s, 80s and all at once that September morning. All I kept thinking: ”you unspeakable bastard”

The images cant be swept under the carpet but equally they musnt be abused. They are a breakaway moment in history. The world pre 9/11 and the world after it. Images like these make you understand, react, learn. There is a burden of responsibility in the future to work out how we deal with our own history captured like this, in real time, by photographers and cameramen - and ensure as we grow up with Abu Ghraib we don’t forget the horror that took us there.