Steve McCurry took an artistic photograph of a rescuer (Magnum Photographers, 17). This is a firefighter climbing a ladder. The photograph is taken in a unique way. McCurry chose to take the photograph from inside a nearby building. The photographer chose to be inside while looking outside. The photograph would not be the same if McCurry took the photograph from outside, perhaps standing beside the fire truck.
You can see that whatever building this was, it was also destroyed. We see remnants of the steel walls. The holes act as frames in this photograph. In the left frame we have the firefighter climbing a ladder and in the right frame we have piles of debris. It almost looks like the black hole, an endless abyss.
Again, we are looking at "Ground Zero." If you look closely, you see that this is heavy debris, pieces of steel and other heavy objects. This enormous pile represents the "weight" of the situation. This is not something that will be cleaned up in a matter of days; it would take months to go through this destruction. And it would take years for Americans to recovery from this tragedy.
This photograph makes you think about our loss as Americans. Not only did we lose landmark buildings, we lost innocent people in this tragedy. More importantly, we lost our feeling of safety and our feeling of power in this evil world that we live in.