Friday, May 22, 2009

New York Daily News Best of Photojournalism 2002 Secret David Handschuh Entry

A completely new resource for me is a six-year-old web effort at awarding honors for taking pictures on September 11, 2001, and its aftermath---The Best of Photojournalism 2002. The Internet Archive has never heard of these pages before, so I don't know when they went up online. Almost the whole batch is unfamiliar to me (and where they are familiar, they are all part of the same entry,) which leads me to think they are of recent public vintage.

This eight-image entry is what I would call a good one, in that it has a cohesive theme narrowed down to a manageable dose. All the captions read
A visual history of the fifteen minutes between the first and second planes hitting the World Trade Center. The story ends with the moment of impact as the second hijacked jet slams into the South tower of the World Trade Center.
Two of the images I recognize as being the work of David Handschuh, who has a third shot in the record similar to these next two---of people running away afraid of things falling on to their heads. They are all very good. The last shot---of victims lying down in a firehouse---looks like it was taken in the station house of the "ten and ten," on Liberty Street near Church Street, and this detail doesn't help Handschuh's narrative much, as it places him in a third quadrant of the site that morning.

Workers flee the tower, covering their heads with their briefcases, as debris falls.

Workers cover their heads with serving trays as they flee the Marriott Hotel. The building was destroyed in the collapse of the South Tower.

Father covers son's head as they flee the horror.

Workers flee the towers.

An Urban Parks Ranger, left, and co-workers, help a burned woman to safety.

Rescue One, loaded with 11 firefighters, race to the crash of the first plane. They are unaware that they are actually riding in a hearse, enroute to their own fiery deaths as none of the 11 firefighters survived the collapse.

A visual history of the fifteen minutes between the first and second planes hitting the World Trade Center. The story ends with the moment of impact as the second hijacked jet slams into the South tower of the World Trade Center, a brilliant orange fireball framed by acrid black smoke and an achingly beautiful blue sky.

A paramedic treats several injured employees who escaped before the second plane hit.

Man jumps to his death to avoid flames ravaging through offices on the upper floors of the World Trade Center, just moments after the second hijacked plane hit the building.

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