Axios interview: The 9/11 photographers who ran toward the danger
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Spectators look up as the World Trade Center goes up in flames September 11, 2001 in New York City. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
"This is history, this is history." That's what photojournalist Spencer Platt was thinking 25 years ago as he photographed the events unfolding on the morning of 9/11.
Why it matters: Platt and fellow Getty photographer Mario Tama told Axios what it was like on the ground that day. Trained as photojournalists, their instinct was to move toward the danger to document history.
Tama had just been hired by Getty Images two months before when he got the urgent call from his assignment editor. Rushing out the door of his Lower East Side apartment, he recalled the horror of what he was documenting:
"There was definitely some cognitive dissonance — it was totally unfathomable. As I got closer on foot, I came across an office worker being treated on the ground, stunned and bloodied. Seeing blood coming out of his ear made the human toll of what was happening frighteningly real."
Tama credits the NYPD for saving his life that morning:
"At this point, some other photographers and I began attempting to get to the base of the towers; as photojournalists, we are trained to get as close as possible. The NYPD likely saved a lot of lives that day, including my own, by blocking us from getting closer in that area."
Attempting to access the towers, Tama witnessed the collapse of the South Tower.
"I then heard a kind of sheering sound and looked up and, horrifyingly, I recall the tower tilted a bit and started to pancake down. In that moment, I went from being a photojournalist to any other New Yorker running for their life, it was absolutely terrifying."
Tama took cover beside a parking garage with strangers as dust rained down in what he describes as a total blackout, holding onto each other in the darkness. After the dust started to clear, he captured a picture of the men he took refuge with:
Meanwhile, Platt awoke in his apartment in Brooklyn's Dumbo neighborhood that morning, a vantage point that let him capture the moment United Airlines Flight 175 slammed into the South Tower. Rushing from his apartment, he gathered with cab drivers on the Brooklyn Bridge as the North Tower burned. Minutes later, he watched the second plane's impact through his camera's viewfinder.
"I made sure I had the pictures by looking at the digital back; a Pakistani taxi driver, looking over my shoulder, yelled out, "He has it, he has the picture!" I proceeded to head over the Brooklyn Bridge towards the towers, my throat parched."
Platt reflected on what it meant to be both a working photojournalist on assignment and a New Yorker trying to survive the horror of that day:
"I think I shifted throughout the day from being a civilian witness to a photojournalist and back to simply being a witness. We had no physical or mental preparation for the event, unlike many of the hard news stories we cover. In the end, I, along with so many other New Yorkers, was simply there, living, breathing, and experiencing one of the saddest and most visually dramatic days in American history. To put a journalist cap on and somehow suppress the civilian, father, husband, and American in you is an impossible task. Some were able to do it better than others."
Twenty-five years later, both photographers reflected on their work as photojournalists and what it means to document history in an image-saturated world where cameras are ubiquitous.
- Tama notes that if 9/11 happened today, "the visual record would be immediate, massive, and probably far more fragmented."
The final frame: In an era where it is harder to ascertain if photos are real, Tama maintains that "experienced professional photojournalists — working in tandem with veteran photo editors — would remain absolutely essential: trained to verify information, abide by editorial standards, and bring the situational awareness and compositional instincts needed to document history's decisive moments."
