Konstantin Petrov, an immigrant from Estonia, was a night-shift electrician who worked at the World Trade Center’s “Windows on the World” restaurant, located at the top of the North Tower. This unique position, and his work schedule, allowed him to capture hundreds of digital photographs of the Twin Towers’ interiors during the summer of 2001.
Petrov worked at night after the offices had closed, and the lack of people in his photos gives them a haunting, “liminal” quality. He captured the mundane and the magnificent: empty offices, stairwells, and elevator fixtures, as well as the stunning panoramic views of New York City at dawn. His photos offer a last, intimate look inside the iconic buildings before they were destroyed.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Petrov finished his shift and was leaving the building’s basement parking lot in his car around 8:30 a.m. when the first plane struck the tower. He only saw debris and didn’t realize the gravity of what had happened until he got home and saw the news. He had narrowly escaped the tragedy.
Tragically, Konstantin Petrov died in a motorcycle accident in Manhattan a year later, in 2002. His photos, which he had uploaded to an Estonian website called Fotki, were later discovered by a documentary filmmaker in 2014, bringing his work to a wider audience and solidifying his legacy as the person who captured some of the last and most detailed internal views of the World Trade Center.
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