The story behind the photo “The Falling Man”

(The falling man, behind the photo, TIME 2016)

Do you remember this photo?

In the United States, many want to erase it from their memories of September 11, 2001, she writes Tom Junod in the magazine Squire. The story behind it, however, and the search for the man in the picture, is the most intimate connection we have to the horror of that day.

Image resistance started from the start, writes Junod in this article. “Surely they are birds, my love,” said a woman to her daughter, who asked her what she saw. “Put down that camera, don’t you have any decency?” A policeman shouted at a passerby who was taking pictures.

Among the thousands of images that shocked the world that day, perhaps there is one that sums up the never-before-seen drama of what has been experienced like no other. A photo that has received dozens of awards and has become an icon of tragedy.

The magazine Time talked with the photographer about PA Richard drew, the man who shot with his camera to represent what would later become known as The falling man, The falling man.

Drew note that on this day took the Times Square subway to Chambers Street, the stop before the World Trade Center. The first thing he saw when he left the station, he said, were the columns of smoke in the two towers.

When he noticed that there were people coming out of the windows of the burning apartments, instinctively pulled out the camera and started taking pictures. Until he does what we’ll call later The falling man.

The man’s identity has never been officially declared. We know that the image corresponds to the north tower of the World Trade Center, and that it was taken at 9:41:15 on the morning of this fateful September 11, 2001.

It was not possible to recover or identify the bodies of dozens of people who died when they were forced to jump into the void.

In 2005, the spokesperson for the New York coroner’s office, Ellen Borakovehe told the newspaper The Washington Post What the experts had already exhausted all the possibilities of the existing technology until then to recover and identify the remains.

But the doctors, he said, promised that they will never say “case closed”.

All victims were declared dead by homicide caused by blunt traumaexcept the murderous kidnappers. Those who were forced to jump into the void were not pronounced dead by suicide.

Some said that The falling man time Norberto Hernandez, head of the restaurant’s confectionery Windows of the world (Windows to the World) on the 106th floor of the North tower, according to the notice dedicated to the photo in Wikipedia. Her family members initially agreed, but upon closer examination of the clothes, they weren’t entirely convinced.

He was Tom junod, of the review Squire, who for the first time, in an article published in September 2003, called the photo The falling man. According to Junod, It was about Jonathan briley, 43, an audio technician from the same restaurant and a resident of Mount Vernon, to new York.

Jonathan briley He worked at the Windows to the World restaurant. Some of your colleagues, looking at Drew’s photographs they thought it might be The falling man. He had slightly dark skin tone. He was over six and a half feet tall and was 43 years old. He had a mustache and goatee and short hair. He had a wife named Hillary.

Briley’s father is a pastor, a man who has dedicated his entire life to the devotion of the Lord. After September 11, 2001, she gathered her whole family and asked God to tell her where her son was. He did not ask him: he demanded it.

He used these words: “Sir, I demand to know where my son is”. For three hours straight, he prayed in a deep voice until he put all the grace he had accumulated in his life into the insistence of her call.

The next day the FBI called him. They had found her son’s body. Miraculously, he was intact.

The pastor’s youngest son, Timothy, went to identify his brother. She recognized him by his shoes: he wore tall black boots. Timothy took one from him and brought it home and put it in the garage as a souvenir.

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