The Falling Man is a photograph taken by Associated Press photographer Richard Drew of a man falling from the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:41:15 a.m. during the September 11 attacks in New York City. The subject of the image, whose identity remains uncertain, was one of the people trapped on the upper floors of the skyscraper who either fell searching for safety or jumped to escape the fire and smoke. With the opening of the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan, the Design Observer ran an interview with Henry Singer who directed a documentary about this photograph back in 2006 – It tells the story of this controversial image: who took it; how it was first published and censored; the responses of the families, and the search to discover the identity of the man in the photograph. Interestingly, Singer notes that while this was one of the images that stood out on that day’s coverage it has almost gone away, to the point where Singer decided it deserves a movie: Singer speculates about the reasons for the photo going away: Singer also thinks that the fact the the image went away was wrong: It is no question that the firefighters became the story that Americans told themselves. And as Tom Junod succinctly puts it in the film an image like the Falling Man, and the reality of the jumpers themselves, just didn’t fit that narrative. It’s very hard to frame them as something that is triumphant. You can see the movie below and read the full interview with Singer on the Design Observer, and the originating article from Tom Junod on Esquire.
