Jeremiah Warren · Follow
7 min read · Sep 10, 2012
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In 2001, digital cameras were a rare commodity. They were expensive, bulky and captured images that were inferior to the organic look of film. After you downloaded and edited those whopping 3.1 megapixel images, you had very few options of where you could publish them online. Remember when Shutterfly and Snapfish were a thing?
Contrast that to today where you have people shooting magazine covers on cell phones and uploading over 500,000 images to Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook every minute. We don’t hear about national tragedies on the news anymore, we read about them in our Twitter and Facebook feeds. Seconds after they happen.
When the events of 9/11 took place there were thousands of photographs taken by professional photographers and members of the press. These images were shown on the news and published in magazines and newspapers all across the country. Yet, few of these featured photographs were taken by everyday people.
I wanted to set about curating a selection of photographs that most of you haven’t seen. Photographs captured by everyday people. Thanks to the internet these individuals have been able to publish their photos to Flickr, but most of them have less than a thousand, or even less than a hundred views. As I searched for these images it was like I was witnessing history again, but from an angle that no one had ever been shown. I decided to share these photographs with all of you.
For the images that were captured on a digital camera, I’ve made a note of the model of the camera. All images are hosted on the account of the person that owns the photographs, none of them were taken down and re-hosted.
Seconds after flight 175 struck the South Tower. Taken with a Canon PowerShot S100 by George Weld.
Marc Garrett, about this image he captured. “The second plane flew directly over my head and slammed into the south tower. It took me a few seconds to get my head together, and this was the shot I took. I’m not a professional photojournalist, but I believe having a camera in my hand and feeling like a I had a “job” to do helped me keep my head.”
The photographer who took this photo mentions that at the time it didn’t occur to him how bad of an idea it was to walk so close to the tower right after it was struck. Later he discovered that he had been hit in the leg by a piece of falling metal, but didn’t notice it until hours later after he had settled down. If you read the comments you’ll find one by the owner of the open delivery truck you see in this image. He mentioned that the driver of the truck, seen in the blue shirt and pants survived the ordeal. The truck, however, was crushed. This image and the following were taken on an Olympus E-10.
This image struck me on a deep emotion level. In the midst of the chaos and destruction there were still people willing to show their selflessness and cover the remains of the victims.
Taken a few moments after the second tower was hit, you can see the cloud of paper floating through the air. Photograph by Ronald Smits.
You can see the outline of the plane’s wing span. Photograph by Hiro.
I think this image speaks for itself. Photograph by Luke Kurtis.
Photographer Jay Boucher says: “My wife had called me that morning to let me know she was safe. “Huh?” I said. She told me to turn on the TV and there was the Trade Center, burning. I grabbed my cameras and ran out to Hoboken’s Pier A. This is what I saw”.
Photograph by George Weld, taken on a Canon PowerShot S100.
Photograph by Michael Foran, taken on an Olympus C2000Z.
Photographed by Harvey Silikovitz on Houston Street in Greenwich Village. “An out-of-town TV reporter who is covering the 9/11 tragedy looks at the smoke emanating from the wreckage of the World Trade Center, a couple of miles to the south. Taken during my pre-digital days, this picture happened to be on a roll that for some reason I had gotten burned onto a CD when I got it developed.”
A rescue team taking off to attempt a rooftop rescue. They never made it. Photograph by Bryan Thatcher, taken with a Sony Cybershot.
Photographer Michael Foran says “This man was overcome with emotion as we listened to the calls of the Firemen and Police trapped in the rubble of the collapsed towers on his police scanner radio.”
Photograph by Eddy, taken on an Olympus C3000Z
It looks like this woman is shooting with an Olympus film camera. I think I still have the same lens and camera. Photograph by Marc AuMarc.
Photograph by George Weld, taken on a Canon PowerShot S100.
There are a lot of photographs of messages scrawled into the dust covering the cars. I can’t make out what the note says. Photograph by Marc AuMarc.
Photographer Hiro says “The firemen were utterly covered by the debris. We all could tell that a lot of it was asbestos, though no one said it outloud. It crossed my mind that this could be the real terror, if all the people around became ill after the fact.”
Taken with a Nikon E990 by George Hackett.
Photograph by Shayna Marchese. Her father posted this image on his Flickr account, he says “This is 6th Avenue and there was no traffic on it at all. Just pedestrians beginning to realize that the first tower had fallen.”
Photographer Brian Boyd says “I’m running North on West Side Highway, just one block from Chambers street. The tower just collapsed seconds before this photo.”
Photograph by George Hackett
Photograph by George Hackett.
Photograph by Bryan Thatcher, taken on a Sony Cybershot.
Photographer Santi-Jose says “I never go down to that area of the city during the week, but there I was on that morning. chance or fate? I was to witness this moment in history. ever since that day seven years ago I almost never leave the house without my camera.”
Brooklyn onlookers. Photograph by Hans.
Photograph by Ken Eng. Taken on a Fujifilm FinePixS1 Pro.
Photograph by Ken Eng.
Photograph by Ken Eng.
Photographed by Rob Sheridan from his Brooklyn apartment, on a Canon EOS D30.
This was taken the day after 9/11, on September 12th, by Eddy.
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