The next set of photographs is interesting because they are taken from the same point of view. These photographs are again taken from Magnum Photographers,
New York September 11
(8-9). The photographer focused on the change in the landscape, which happened in a matter of minutes on that day. Steve McCurry photographed these scenes, capturing the magnitude of this attack.
Photograph five shows the second tower after it was hit. You can see the top of the tower beginning to crumble. The smoke is billowing, forming gray clouds hovering over Manhattan. These clouds represent the terrible sadness this event caused. From this day forth, our lives would be changed.
The next photograph, photograph six, shows how fast the destruction progressed. In a matter of seconds much more of the building began to crumble. You can see the debris that was sent in all directions. In minutes, the surrounding buildings would be covered or even destroyed.
Those once powerful towers among the unique landmarks of the United States of America, were gone. Americans no longer felt safe and protected, as we did for so many years. This photograph reminds me of a volcano erupting, the tower is erupting, exploding into pieces. The World Trade Center took seven years to build, and was demolished in a matter of hours.
The last photograph in this sequence shows the dust and debris that covered the buildings and the city. It looks like a blanket, covering the surrounding buildings. This photograph looks like a massive explosion has just occurred. Some of the buildings that were visible in the other two photos are no longer visible now. For the next eight months, the World Trade Center site cleanup and recovery continued twenty-four hours a day and involved thousands of workers.
Steve McCurry took all of these aerial photographs to capture as much of the cityscape as possible. McCurry wanted viewers to see the size and magnitude of this terrible event. By photographing a large portion of the city, it looks like the smoke is swallowing the buildings and taking over the city. In these photographs, the billowing smoke takes up more than half of the photograph. This smoke actually created somewhat of a fog over Manhattan that lasted for days.
The September 11 attack began when a hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower at 8:46 am. At 9:03 am, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower. The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 am, while the North Tower later collapsed at 10:28 am. Later that day 7 World Trade Center also collapsed. The four remaining buildings in the World Trade Center plaza were damaged and later demolished. It took months to cleanup after this attack. More importantly, innocent lives were lost. There were 2,749 deaths related to the WTC attacks, as of February 2005 (http://en.wikipedia.org).