Members of the Short Tail Gang Gathered Under a Pier at Corlears Hook in New York City, ca. 1887

Captured in 1889 by Jacob Riis, the only known photograph of the notorious Short Tail Gang offers a rare and chilling window into New York City’s underworld. Pictured beneath the pier at the foot of Jackson Street near Corlears Hook, the gang members sit hunched on damp wooden planks, eating from tin cans. Their distinctive short-tailed jackets, practical yet defiant, gave the gang its name and served as a makeshift uniform in the harsh world of tenement life and street survival.

The Short Tail Gang, also known as the Short Tails for their distinctive short-tailed jacket coats, were an 1880s–1890s Irish gang located in the Corlear's Hook section of the Lower East Side, on Rivington Street in the vicinity of Mangin and Goerck Streets of Manhattan, in New York City. The Eastman Gang was also headquartered around Corlear’s Hook and may have had its beginnings as a breakaway gang of the Short Tail Gang.

The Short Tails, along with rival gangs the Daybreak Boys, the Patsy Conroy Gang, the Swamp Angels, and the Hook Gang, worked the New York City waterfront, plundering ships of their cargo on the East River. The Short Tail Gang was photographed in 1887, under a pier by noted photographer Jacob Riis, being one of the few 19th-century New York gangs to allow its members to be photographed. In fear of being identified and arrested by the law, usually individual police mug shots were the only criminal pictures known to exist.

People Wash Their Car as the Rubble of the World Trade Center Looms in the Background Shortly After the September 11 Attacks

This is a real photograph taken on September 24, 2001, about two weeks after the September 11 attacks, by Bay Area News Group photojournalist Jane Tyska while documenting the post-9/11 recovery effort in Manhattan. It shows two people washing a Mazda MX-5 Miata on a street near Ground Zero, with the skeletal remains of the South Tower of the World Trade Center visible in the background amid ongoing recovery and cleanup work.

When the Twin Towers collapsed, toxic dust, pulverized concrete, glass, and ash covered all surrounding streets and buildings. The black Mazda MX-5 Miata shown in the photo had been parked inside a nearby garage since September 11. Roughly two weeks later, when residents and owners were finally permitted back into the restricted zone to retrieve their vehicles, the owners pulled the car out and began hosing away the dense layer of hazardous debris so it could be safely driven out of the Financial District.

Photographers were drawn to the scene because it captured a stark juxtaposition: two everyday people engaging in a mundane task, washing a sports car, right in front of the wreckage of Ground Zero.

The photo has circulated widely in recent years (especially in Miata enthusiast communities), sometimes sparking skepticism that it might be AI-generated or staged due to the stark contrast between the ordinary act of washing a car and the catastrophic scene behind it. Tyska has confirmed its authenticity, calling claims that it’s fake “absolutely ridiculous.” She still works as a staff photographer and happens to own a classic red NA Miata herself.

Ground Zero Photographs (September-October 2001) Discovered and Archived by Jason Scott

In 2019, an extraordinary visual archive came to light: thousands of previously unpublished photos taken at Ground Zero in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, through October 2001. The images were taken by an unidentified construction or recovery worker using a Canon PowerShot G1, a compact 3-megapixel digital camera from 2000. They cover late September through early October 2001 and show a wide range of viewpoints: ground-level work among the rubble, elevated or interior views from nearby buildings, heavy machinery, workers clearing debris, damaged structures, and the overall scale of the site.

In 2019, an archivist couple, Dr. Johnathan Burgess and his partner, purchased a collection of deteriorating, old CD-Rs at a private house clearance estate sale in Massachusetts. The discs contained thousands of candid photos taken at the World Trade Center site between September and October 2001. 

Because the CD-Rs were systematically warping and rotting, Dr. Burgess passed the files to fellow archivist and Internet Archive historian Jason “Textfiles” Scott, who successfully extracted the data and uploaded the full set to Flickr for public access. The photographer had died by the time of the discovery, so no interview was possible. Scott has noted the health toll on many who worked at the site.

Unlike media photos focused primarily on the immediate collapse or political press conferences, Scott’s collection offers a raw, granular, daily-life record of the cleanup operation. Detailed close-ups of the twisted exterior steel tridents, crushed structural girders, and smoking rubble fields. Candid shots of FDNY firefighters, NYPD officers, construction crews, crane operators, and bucket-brigade lines working in heavy dust and smoke.

Visual documentation of neighboring structures (such as the WFC Winter Garden, 130 Cedar Street, and the Bankers Trust Building) showing shattered glass, blown-out facades, and interior dust coats. Coverage of the supply staging areas, temporary medical tents, volunteer food stations, and makeshift memorial walls surrounding lower Manhattan.

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Photos of New York City Streets Covered in Dust and Debris Following Twin Towers Collapse

On September 11, 2001, the catastrophic collapse of the World Trade Center Twin Towers instantly transformed the bustling streets of Lower Manhattan into a desolate landscape covered in thick dust and debris.

The collapse of the multi-ton skyscrapers generated massive, fast-moving clouds of dust and ash that swept through the streets like a localized storm. The plume was so immense that lighter particles carried nearly three miles away, reaching as far north as the Empire State Building.

Passersby, office workers, and first responders were completely enveloped in the plume, leaving survivors heavily coated in a thick layer of gray powder. The density of the smoke and settled particles completely blocked out daylight, plunging nearby city blocks into near-total darkness during the middle of the morning. The streets immediately surrounding the complex were buried under feet of pulverized building materials, twisted structural steel, smashed vehicles, and shattered glass.

Scientific analysis conducted by institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published via the National Institutes of Health (NIH) detailed that the settled material was far from normal dust. Roughly 80% to 90% of the mixture was highly alkaline and consisted of: crushed concrete and cement, gypsum (from drywall), synthetic vitreous fibers (such as fiberglass and slag wool), toxic contaminants including asbestos, silica, heavy metals, and carcinogenic combustion by-products from the ongoing fires.

The area, which quickly became known as Ground Zero, spanned roughly 16 acres. Because the dust was easily resuspended by wind or movement, it remained a severe respiratory hazard for months. A massive cleanup operation involving thousands of workers continued around the clock until the site was officially cleared eight months later, in May 2002.

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Rare 9/11 Footage Nearly Lost Forever, Found 23 Years Later

On September 11, 2001, 24-year-old Japanese man Kei Sugimoto filmed the attack on the World Trade Center from a rooftop about 3 kilometers away. Twenty-three years later in 2024, he rediscovered the deteriorating tapes and published the footage, preserving a visual record that came close to disappearing forever.

Sugimoto filmed from the rooftop of 64 St. Marks Place in the East Village, roughly 3 kilometers (under 2 miles) north of the Twin Towers. The video was captured using a high-end consumer Sony VX2000 mini-DV camcorder fitted with a teleconverter lens, resulting in a remarkably clear and zoomed-in view for 2001 amateur standards.

Historians and archiving enthusiasts noted that this is the only known footage capturing the collapse of the towers exclusively from the north perspective. Most other widely available angles were captured from the south, east, or across the Hudson River.

Sugimoto originally assumed the incident was a standard building fire, but realized it was a terrorist attack after witnessing the second plane strike. Though he saw the second impact, he did not catch it on camera; he ran to grab his gear immediately afterward to document the unfolding event.

The resulting video lasts about 6 minutes and 16 seconds, providing a crisp, continuous look at the massive smoke plumes billowing from the structures before recording the step-by-step collapse of both towers.

Sugimoto initially tried to hand his tape over to the police on the day of the attacks, but they declined to take it. He subsequently stored it away and forgot about it. More than two decades later, while cleaning out his home, he rediscovered the old physical tapes. Recognizing that magnetic tape degrades and corrupts over time, he decided to digitize the files for historical archival purposes and uploaded them to his personal YouTube channel. The footage quickly amassed millions of views, sparking global conversations about how much undiscovered historical material may still reside in people's attics and closets.

The Clearest Video of American Airlines Flight 11 Striking the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001

Jules Clément Naudet and Thomas Gédéon Naudet are French-American filmmakers. The brothers, residents of the United States since 1989 and citizens since 1999, were in New York City at the time of the September 11 attacks to film a documentary on members of the Engine 7, Ladder 1 firehouse in Lower Manhattan.

Jules captured the clearest footage of the first airplane, American Airlines Flight 11, hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center when he rode with Battalion 1 to investigate a suspected gas leak in a storm drain at the intersection of Church and Lispenard streets while filming a documentary about the FDNY. The footage shot in 2001 was made into the 2002 documentary 9/11. The video camera that Jules was using that captured Flight 11 crashing into the World Trade Center is now on display in the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

20 Photographs Taken From a Camera Showing Flight 175 Approaching the South Tower on September 11, 2001

On the morning of September 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 175 was a domestic passenger flight hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists. The Boeing 767 departed from Boston's Logan International Airport bound for Los Angeles.

At approximately 9:03 a.m. EDT, 17 minutes after American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower, Flight 175 was deliberately flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact occurred between the 77th and 85th floors.

The event was broadcast live by numerous media outlets that were already covering the attack on the North Tower. The collision caused a massive explosion and fire, killing all 65 people on board and hundreds more inside the building.

The impact of the plane, combined with the intense fire from the jet fuel, severely damaged the South Tower’s structural integrity, and it collapsed 56 minutes later at 9:59 a.m.

Most imagery of Flight 175 is from video footage, since dozens of news crews and amateur videographers in New York were already filming after Flight 11 struck the North Tower. Still photographs of Flight 175 in the air are very rare. A few professional and amateur photographers with still cameras captured it by chance.

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Photographs Taken by NYPD Officer Walter Taylor Before the Collapse of the South Tower on September 11, 2001

On September 11, 2001, at 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, striking floors 77 through 85. This occurred about 17 minutes after the first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, had hit the North Tower.

After the first plane hit the North Tower, many people in the South Tower began to evacuate on their own, despite an initial announcement on the public address system advising them to stay in their offices.

The impact of Flight 175 caused catastrophic structural damage and ignited a massive fire. The plane’s high speed and off-center impact left the building unbalanced and weakened the steel columns and trusses that supported the floors.

The crash and subsequent fire trapped hundreds of people on the floors above the impact zone. While one of the three stairwells in the South Tower remained partially intact, allowing some people to escape from above the impact zone, many others were unable to get out.

The fires, fueled by the jet fuel, weakened the building’s steel structure. As the steel began to heat up, the floor trusses started to sag, pulling away from the outer columns. This process, known as “creep,” eventually led to the failure of the core columns. The weakening of the steel structure caused the floors above the impact zone to drop onto the floors below, initiating a chain reaction of progressive collapse that led to the entire tower’s fall.

These rarely seen photographs taken by NYPD officer Walter Taylor before the South Tower’s collapse at 9:59 a.m. (56 minutes after impact) on September 11, 2001:

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Rare Photographs Taken From the Queensboro Plaza Elevated Subway Station on 9/11

On September 11, 2001, commuters at the Queensboro Plaza elevated subway station in Queens, New York, had a direct, distant line of sight looking southwest down toward Lower Manhattan, where the World Trade Center towers were smoking after the terrorist attacks.

These rare photographs captured this specific vantage point, showing N and W train platforms with the burning towers framed in the background across the East River.

30 Amazing Photos of Airplanes Flying Over the Twin Towers, Before Their Destruction on September 11, 2001

Before September 11, 2001, commercial airliners and civil aircraft regularly shared the skyline with the World Trade Center towers. Because Lower Manhattan sits in close proximity to Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), LaGuardia Airport (LGA), and John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), aircraft banking over the Hudson and East Rivers were a standard visual feature of the New York metropolitan airspace throughout the late 20th century.

The Twin Towers stood at 1,368 feet (North Tower) and 1,362 feet (South Tower). Flights departing or approaching Newark and LaGuardia frequently traversed corridors over the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay, placing incoming and outgoing air traffic within clear visual range of Lower Manhattan.

During the design phase in the mid-1960s, lead structural engineer Leslie Robertson and the Port Authority designed the towers to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707, the largest commercial jetliner in service at the time, assuming a lost aircraft searching for a landing site in heavy fog.

Air France and British Airways Concordes flying in or out of JFK were frequently photographed climbing past the Manhattan skyline with the towers framed in the background. Local sightseeing helicopters, police aircraft, and small private planes operated routinely in the low-altitude Hudson River VFR (Visual Flight Rules) corridor adjacent to the complex.

Following the tragedy, airspace rules over Manhattan were permanently altered, heavily restricting low-altitude civilian flights over the city.

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Debbie Harry on Top of the World Trade Center, ca. 1974

This photograph of Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry was taken around 1974–1975 by her bandmate, co-founder, and long-time partner, Chris Stein. Harry is pictured leaning against the railing of the Observation Deck atop one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, looking south toward Upper New York Bay, Governors Island, and Staten Island.

Taken during the very early days of Blondie before they achieved global stardom, the photo reflects the gritty, artistic downtown New York scene of the mid-1970s.

Chris Stein was not only Blondie's guitarist and main songwriter alongside Harry, but also an avid photographer who documented the band's rise, everyday moments, and the surrounding NYC punk/new wave scene.

When Stein republished this image in his photo retrospective Point of View: Me, New York City & The Punk Scene, he noted its deep emotional and historical weight. Beyond being a candid snapshot of a future rock icon in her formative years, it stands as a poignant artifact of pre-9/11 New York City, capturing a lost moment in time before both the band’s fame and the towers themselves changed history.

Photographer Posts Never-Before-Seen Photographs of 9/11 Bystanders

A photographer (storiestellr) on Threads has gained significant attention for sharing a series of unpublished, chronological photographs of 9/11 bystanders. The photo series documents everyday people on the streets of New York City during the morning of September 11, 2001, capturing the immediate, raw confusion, disbelief, and shock as the events unfolded.

Instead of focusing directly on the burning buildings, the images emphasize the faces of bystanders, witnesses, and ordinary New Yorkers trying to process the tragedy in real time. Many of these archival photos reflect a surreal mix of normalcy and mounting realization, showing how individuals reacted instinctively to preserve history before the full scale of the terrorist attack was completely understood.

Along with each image, the photographer posts written captions reflecting on what was happening at that specific location and moment, detailing the human experience behind the lens.

“Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, I turned my camera away from World Trade Center and toward the bewildered crowd,” he wrote. “Starting today, I’m posting a few chronological photographs a day, with a line or two from my journal and an essay I wrote – until September 11, 2026.”

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30 Beautiful Photos of the World Trade Center in the 1970s

These beautiful photos capture the World Trade Center during its first full decade as a defining feature of the New York skyline.

Completed in the early 1970s, the Twin Towers quickly became symbols of modern ambition and architectural boldness. The images show the buildings from various perspectives: rising above Lower Manhattan, reflecting in the Hudson River, or standing against clear blue skies; conveying both their monumental scale and their everyday presence in the city.

These photos preserve a vivid visual record of the World Trade Center in the years when it still represented the future of New York.

A growing city, New York, 1970

Aerial views of Manhattan featuring World Trade Center under construction, 1970

The World Trade Center under construction, New York, 1970

Twin Towers under construction, New York, 1970

Twin Towers under construction, New York, January 1, 1970

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Photo of the World Trade Center Taken With a GameBoy Camera, Two Months Before 9/11

This image of the iconic Twin Towers was taken from a street-level perspective, rendered in the unmistakable 4-color grayscale palette (2-bit) and ultra-low 128x112 pixel resolution characteristic of Nintendo’s 1998 Game Boy Camera accessory. It was captured in July 2001, exactly two months before the September 11 attacks, by an anonymous visitor who brought their handheld console to the plaza.

While it looks like a modern digital filter or pixel art recreation, the image is completely real. It belongs to a rare category of pre-9/11 photography where hobbyists documented New York City using primitive digital tech. Similar projects from that exact era, such as photographer David Friedman’s 2000–2001 Game Boy Camera New York series, have been archived online to preserve how the turn-of-the-century skyline looked through the lens of a literal toy.

The Game Boy Camera (released as the Pocket Camera in Japan) is one of the most eccentric and historically significant peripherals in gaming history. Launched by Nintendo in 1998 for $49.95, it handed an entire generation of kids and tech enthusiasts their very first taste of consumer digital photography.

When it debuted, Nintendo marketed the cartridge strictly as a toy. However, it was a massive technological achievement under the hood. In the 1999 Guinness Book of World Records, the Game Boy Camera was officially certified as the World’s Smallest Digital Camera. Weighing just 70 grams, it packed an incredibly small, low-cost CMOS sensor that accidentally put Nintendo at the cutting edge of mass-produced digital photography hardware.

Manufacturing ceased in late 2002, but the Game Boy Camera experienced a massive cultural revival as a tool for “funtography” and lo-fi art. Using modern hardware like custom Arduino or Raspberry Pi boards, enthusiasts now emulate the Game Boy Printer to extract raw .PNG files onto modern computers.

Private Footage of the 9/11 Terrorist Attack Shot by a College Student From a NYU Dormitory

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Caroline Dries was a student at New York University (NYU) residing on a high floor at 200 Water Street in Lower Manhattan with her roommate, Megan. Awakened at 8:46 a.m. by the sound of American Airlines Flight 11 hitting the North Tower, Dries began filming with a handheld camcorder she had bought just a week earlier.

The camera captured the raw real-time reactions of Dries and her dorm mates. At 9:03 a.m., while zooming in on falling debris and people jumping from the North Tower, United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower live on camera. The shocking moment led to panicked reactions as the students realized it was an intentional attack rather than an accident.

Horrified, Dries and her roommate briefly fled into the street but returned to their dorm room due to confusion and chaos outside. Her video later captured the collapse of the South Tower at 9:59 a.m.

Dries held onto the raw tapes for nearly a decade, finding it difficult to process the gravity of what she had captured, which included heartbreaking details like victims falling from the towers. She eventually shared her story and footage publicly around the 10th anniversary of the attacks on programs for networks like the CNN Student Footage Interview and The History Channel.

Dries later pursued a highly successful career in television, working as a writer and executive producer on major series including Smallville, The Vampire Diaries, and creating Batwoman for The CW. Despite her Hollywood success, she has noted that the raw 9/11 tape remains the most significant and compelling piece of film she will ever be a part of.

The Story Behind the Haunting 9/11 Photographs Taken at Ground Zero by Steve Silva

Esteban “Steve” Silva grew up in La Puente, California. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999 and went to work in Morgan Stanley’s San Francisco Branch in 2000. He arrived for his first visit in New York City for what was to be a 3-week training course at the Company Headquarters on the 61st Floor, South Tower, of the World Trade Center. The second day of training was September 11, 2001.

Silva initially saw paper and debris falling outside his window, followed by flames. He and others in his office began to evacuate by taking the stairs. An intercom announcement told everyone to return to their offices, and Silva, unsure what to do, went to the 44th-floor lobby where he saw a TV report confirming a plane had hit the North Tower. He later said he felt a brief sense of relief, thinking it was an accident, not terrorism.

Less than a minute later, the second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, struck the South Tower, the very building he was in. The impact was devastating. The walls of the lobby cracked, and objects flew across the room.

Realizing the imminent danger, Silva raced down the stairs to the ground floor and escaped the building. As he fled the South Tower and in the aftermath of the attacks, he took photographs with his camera and extra rolls of film. His photos capture the destruction, the chaos, and the aftermath of the events as seen from the perspective of someone who had just escaped.

Here, Silva recalled his story on that day:

“Around May of 2001, I began working for an investment banking firm called Morgan Stanley. At the time, all of their new hires were sent to New York for a 3-week training program inside of their headquarters in World Trade Center 2. I was pretty excited about it because I have never been to New York before and I had a lot planned. I arrived at JFK airport in New York on Saturday, September 8th. As soon as I checked into my hotel, the Shelburne Murray Hill, I took the subway to Yankee Stadium and watched the Yankees and Red Sox play. Afterward, I met up with my friend Veronica, who was working as a fashion designer at the time and living near Central Park, and went to dinner at a sushi restaurant. We had a great dinner and then sang several karaoke songs after that. I had spent my Sunday walking around Manhattan by myself and exploring.

“We were to be holding our training sessions on the 61st floor of Tower 2, the South Tower. Our start time was 7:30 a.m., which made it 4:30 a.m. California time and I was not looking forward to it. There were three of us there from the San Francisco branch-Tom H., Chris R., and myself. We met at 6:45 a.m. in front of our hotel to catch a charter bus that took us to the World Trade Center.

“I was amazed at how tall the Towers were, you had to crane your neck all the way back see the top. When we entered, we took photos and were issued ID cards to gain access to the building. We took the elevator up to the 61st floor and were taken aback by the view up there.  We were looking down on the surrounding buildings. The Towers were 110 stories tall and my intention was to go to the top. There was a restaurant in the North Tower called Windows on the World and I wanted to eat a meal there, all the way up top. While talking to each other, my coworkers and I became acutely aware of the World Trade Center bombing that occurred in 1993. We joked around that we had to ‘be careful.’

“At lunch, I walked over to Wall Street a couple of blocks away and walked around. I grabbed a slice of pizza and had my shoes shined, thinking that I was a bigshot. I went over to the New York Stock Exchange, but the line to get in was long and the security there was very tight. After a long day of lectures, it was time to call it a day, I cannot remember if it was 5 or 6 p.m. I decided to hang out in lower Manhattan instead of going back to my hotel, so I began wandering around. The humid weather soon turned to rain, so I went to a store and bought an umbrella, hoping to stay dry. After walking around and taking pictures for a while, the rain began to fall heavily.

“I had heard that Little Italy was in the area, so I wanted to go there and eat at an Italian restaurant, thinking that I may see a mobster or two like in the movies. I couldn’t find Little Italy and I was soaked to the skin at this point. The rain was coming down at an angle, wetting me from the side, making my umbrella pretty useless. I took the subway to Grand Central Station, back to my hotel. I took a hot shower and spent the night watching TV with my roommate Mike, who was from our L.A. branch.  We watched Band of Brothers and I was amazed at how realistic it looked. We then watched American Beauty. We finally fell asleep around 2 a.m.

“I awoke the next morning at 6:30 am and rousted my roommate. We ran around frantically for 15 minutes getting ready and made it out in time to catch our bus to the World Trade Center. I thought that I may have gotten sick from being soaked by the rain the night before, but I was fine. I sat behind Tom and he gave me the sports section of the New York Times to read. I was too tired so I just put it into my satchel. When we arrived at the Towers, I went to a food cart and bought a poppy seed bagel, my favorite, with cream cheese. I didn’t have a chance to eat it so I took it up with me.

“It was 7:30 in the morning and I was very tired and sleepy. Unfortunately, I was sitting in the front row and had nowhere to hide. I put a rubber band on my left hand and kept snapping it to stay awake. An hour passed and we finally took our first break of the morning around 8:30 a.m. We dropped our Business Plans, that we slaved over for months, into a box as we filed out of the room. We were drinking coffee and eating snacks while looking out of the huge windows of the building. We could see the Statue of Liberty and the ant-like cars and people below.

“Suddenly, papers started flying by, outside of the windows. We crowded up to the windows and saw fiery debris everywhere on the buildings next to us. I thought that a garbage truck must have blown up or something, but then realized that the papers were up where we were at and coming from around the Tower. I thought out loud ‘A bomb must have gone off,’ at which the manager standing next to me and I both looked at each other and I probably had the same surprised look that he did. We immediately started going around the room telling people we should leave. I went to my seat and grabbed my satchel. While everyone was leaving, I went to a room that had multiple phones and tried to call a coworker, Steve D., in the San Francisco branch to tell him what had happened. It was still too early and no one was there. When I came out, a guy that worked in the building told me to evacuate. I headed to the nearest stairwell, and as I entered, it was full of people walking down the steps.

“Everyone was pretty calm at the time, and I remember that there was coffee spilled on the floor and everyone was going ‘Careful, spilled coffee’ as they stepped over it. I walked down from the 61st floor to the 45th when a man’s voice came up on the intercom in the stairwell.  He said ‘Everybody be calm, a plane hit the first World Trade Center, the second Tower is secure, you can all go back to your offices.’ ‘What?’, we all looked at each other in surprise and the guy behind me said ‘Yeah, I heard that a small plane hit the building.’ The woman in front of me said ‘That’s b*llsh*t! I’m getting out of here!’. Somehow I was the dividing point and the people in front of me went down and the people behind me started going back up. I didn’t know whether to stay or to go, so I decided to stay where I was at and went back into the building.

“I walked around for a couple of minutes and then remembered that the 44th floor was a transfer level for the elevators. Since the Towers are so tall, you have to get to certain floors that are transfer levels to get to other floors. I decided to go down to the 44th. As I opened the door to the stairwell, I set off an alarm and I looked around, feeling embarrassed by it. Other people on the floor were spooked by the alarm and headed down the stairwell to get out. I went down and into the 44th floor. To my left was the side of the building about 15 feet away. There were two escalators in between, one going up and one going down to the 43rd floor. In front of me was a large, flatscreen TV with the Bloomberg news on. To my right extended a long row of huge elevators with people walking around. I stood there watching the TV and reading the closed captioning at the bottom. Sure enough, I read that a plane had hit the North Tower. I actually felt a sense of relief because I thought that it was a small plane that had accidentally hit the building. It wasn’t anything intentional. I thought that was bad for the poor guy in the plane but that it wasn’t as serious as we thought. After a few seconds, a loud ‘BOOM’ ripped through the building from behind.

“My first thought was ‘A bomb! F*ck, they got me!’. I felt the building jump from the impact and as I turned around to my right I could see things flying across the room. I thought ‘It looks just like a movie!’.  When I finally finished turning around and looked behind, the building was violently shaking, the lights were flashing on and off, people were falling down, and the walls were cracking. I thought “F*ck, I’m dead.’ The building kept shaking so hard that I thought that is was going to collapse. I braced myself and waited for the building to come down and crush me. I had accepted the fact that I was going to die. I had no epiphanies, my life didn’t flash before me, I just stood there and waited.

“After a few seconds, the shaking stopped and I then thought ‘I gotta get out of here!’. I spun around again and saw that both escalators were twisted up from all of the shaking. I ran down, somehow without tripping, and I saw three people dressed in white running towards me and then veering off to my right. Someone mentioned afterward that they must have been guardian angels, but I found out that there was a cafeteria on that floor and they probably worked there. As I ran after them, I heard them praying in Spanish and I thought ‘what a great idea!’, so I started praying also. We opened the door to the stairwell and this time it was packed with people panicking, running to get out. I started running down with them, praying through several flights of stairs. It didn’t matter how old or fat someone was, everyone was running down quickly. There were square signs in the stairwell with the number of the floor on them. I saw 43, 42, 41, 40, 39, 38, and I just kept thinking ‘Damn, when am I getting out of here?!’. When I reached the mid twenties, I was already exhausted and sweating, walking with everyone else.

“There was smoke in the stairwell, so I reached into my bag to grab my handkerchief and I accidentally grabbed my camera. It was my first time in New York and I had my camera and 3 rolls of film. I immediately started taking pictures at this point. We kept walking down and came across people, who I assume worked for the Port Authority, who were standing around and guiding us out. They were telling us which way to go. Around the 7th floor is when I saw firemen coming up the stairwell. I told a couple of them ‘Thanks guys!’. We were led all the way to the bottom floor, where the subway and the shops were at. It appeared that all of the World Trade Center buildings were connected by this underground network. We were all walking en masse when I turned to the guy next to me and said ‘Oh man, we made it.’ Then I thought ‘We’re UNDERNEATH the building!’. I started to walk faster. We finally reached steps that went back up to the first floor and I realized that we were now in World Trade Center 5. I paused at the base of the steps and kneeled down to take a break. A man walked up to me and asked me if I was okay. I said ‘Yes,’ and then stood up and walked up the steps. As we walked out of one of the entrances to World Trade Center 5, I could see debris strewn about the area.

“A man wearing a white dress shirt stood outside facing us and he kept saying ‘Don’t look up! Don’t look up!’. Naturally, I turned around and looked up. I then saw one of the most horrific sites ever, the North and South Towers on fire. I raised my camera, took a picture, then turned around and ran across the street. As I was running across the street, a cameraman stood there recording me. I felt like a refugee fleeing a bombed out village that you see in war movies. As soon as I reached the other side of the street, I took another picture of the people streaming out of the building. Somehow, luckily, I saw Tom coming across and we came together. We both looked up at our burning building and I said ‘How are we going to work tomorrow?’. Tom said ‘We’ll probably just do it in the hotel instead.’ ‘Okay,’ I replied.

“Shock was already setting in. We started taking more pictures at this time of the Towers and of ourselves in front of the Towers. Cars nearby had their doors open and the radio news blared out about attacks happening everywhere across the country. A gal wearing a black sport coat, I assume she was from the Port Authority also, came up to us and said ‘You know, it’s not a good idea to be hanging around.’ Tom and I looked up, at each other, and immediately agreed. At this point, more and more people kept coming up and milling around. Some of them were crying and others just stared, wide-eyed, with their hands on their mouths.

“We started walking up Broadway and soon found ourselves in front of a Federal Building. We immediately crossed the street to the other side. We continued walking up Broadway passing hundreds of people. Emergency vehicles sped by us, with their lights flashing and their sirens wailing. I’ll remember the sound of those sirens forever. We felt hungry, and decided to go into a store to do some shopping. After a few minutes of filling our baskets, we thought ‘What the hell are we doing?’. We dropped the baskets and just bought water. We continued walking and came across a woman crying hysterically. We walked up to her and hugged her. People just walked by and looked at us. We continued up Broadway and took pictures of the burning Towers and their dark plumes of smoke. I was hungry and I turned to Tom and said ‘I left my bagel up in the building.’ I was really looking forward to eating it.

“We had walked about six blocks when we heard a loud rumble from behind. Everyone turned around and we watched as a cloud of smoke rose up in the distance, covering buildings. In a panic, we all turned around and started running away. Things were a bit of a blur at this point while we were running. After a block or so, Tom and I slowed down to catch our breath and we came upon a liquor store. We went inside, grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels, and immediately opened it up and started drinking. We walked up to the cashier, gave him money, and walked out with our bottle. We were badly shaken up and needed something to calm ourselves. Tom had a brother living in New York, so we set out for his apartment. After awhile, we eventually arrived there and the first thing Tom’s brother did was give him a big hug and say that he thought we were dead. It was weird hearing someone say that. We stood around talking, drinking Jack Daniels from a glass now. I noticed my hand shaking while I drank. I couldn’t sit down at all, I still felt adrenaline pumping through my body and I felt like I could jump out the window if I had to. While watching the TV, we finally saw what caused the loud rumble and smoke cloud: the two Towers collapsing.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes as I watched the television replay the collapse over and over. It was just too difficult to believe that these icons of the New York skyline were now gone. I thought about the firemen I had seen going up the stairs and thought that they were surely dead. Most of the phones around a large radius of the Towers were no longer working and I was relieved to find that Tom’s brother had a working phone. I called home and my father answered. I spoke to him in Spanish and told him what had happened, but he didn’t seem to comprehend what was going on and he just told me to be careful. After a couple of hours, Tom and I headed back to our hotel. When we arrived, we passed by the hotel bar and a group of guys we were working with rushed upon us. My roommate, Mike, gave me a big hug and said ‘I thought you guys died!’. We had arrived long after everyone else, so it was a reasonable assumption. I went up to my hotel room and sat on my bed. Then I took a hot shower and sat on my bed again.  My mind was racing and I didn’t know what to do.”

Silva’s photographs are a powerful and personal “eyewitness photographic testimony” to the 9/11 attacks, and they hold special significance because they were taken by someone who was physically present in one of the targeted buildings. He has stated that having a camera with him gave “so much extra weight to the story.”

“Surviving the attack made me a different person,” Silva said. “I was not the same guy for about 3 years. I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and saw a therapist for a few years. I feel much better now, but will always carry this event with me. I’m leery of tall buildings and bridges now because my sense of safety was shattered. I am a more serious person now and think that surviving this gave me some sort of wisdom. I feel like it is a cross for me to bear, to talk to others and to give them inspiration while suffering in the inside. I was giving presentations for a while for a friend of mine who is a LA Sheriff Deputy. Though it wasn’t easy talking about my experience, it had a truly positive effect on all those in attendance. I didn’t mind re-living the event in my mind and in front of others because it is therapy for them also.”

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