The Falling Man
| The Falling Man |
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| Richard Drew |
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Link to the picture |
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The Falling Man is the title of a sensational picture by photographer Richard Drew .
The picture was taken on September 11, 2001 at 9:41:15 am ( Eastern Daylight Time ) in New York City and shows a man throwing himself out of the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 . This man was one of about 200 people trapped in the fire on the upper floors of the WTC, who jumped desperately under the influence of heat or smoke .
On September 5, 2006, the German TV broadcaster RTL II showed September 11, 2001 - Leap in Death (Original 9/11: The Falling Man ), a documentary about the creation of this photo, in the series “Fateful Strikes” . After extensive research, including with the help of the victim's family, Richard Drew came to the conclusion that the man in this photo is most likely the sound engineer Jonathan Briley. He had worked in the Windows on the World restaurant on the top floor of the north tower.
The photo, one of a series of images of the jump, generated strong reactions after its publication. In the USA in particular, the newspapers and the photographer were accused of merely trying to satisfy the voyeurism of the readers and of violating the man's privacy. The picture was therefore only published once in many publications and then withheld due to self-censorship by the media.
Drew himself said of the criticism: “You can see from the reactions how important the picture is. I did not photograph someone's death, but a moment in that man's life. He made a decision and I captured it in the picture. "
Don DeLillo dealt with the consequences of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in his novel Falling Man , published in 2007. In this novel, "Falling Man" is the stage name of a performance artist who is secured in the position of the real Falling Man from various elevated points in New York jumps.
literature
- Don DeLillo : Falling Man . 1st edition. Picador, 2011, ISBN 978-0-330-52491-9 (American English).
Web links
Individual evidence
- 9/11: The Falling Man ; Channel 4 , March 16, 2006
- Tom Junod: "Falling Man". In: Esquire Magazine, September 2003
- Giles Hattersley: Falling Man: the many faces of a 9/11 riddle . ( September 17, 2008 memento in the Internet Archive ) In: Sunday Times , March 5, 2006
- ↑ Richard Drew about the photo : “This is how it affected people's lives at that time, and I think that is why it's an important picture. I didn't capture this person's death. I captured part of his life. This is what he decided to do, and I think I preserved that. ”Quoted from Peter Howe, The Digital Journalist, 2001