2021 – WTC Pix Before/During/After 9/11 by Land/Sea/Air
(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on September 10, 2021)
This Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of 9/11. I kinda doubt I’ll be around for the 40th, so I decided on Monday the 6th to see if I could put this monstrosity together in time to launch it on the 10th.
It took 3 days just to find and scan all the old slides, re-scan my site’s tiny September 11th images and figure out a way to present them all. It’s now Wednesday evening and I’m just starting to write and hope that I can finish that tomorrow AND build the WordPress post so I can launch on Friday.
It makes sense to do the entire post as a sequence, so I’ve just sorted the files in folders by year, which leads me to……….
1977
This is the first time I can recall ever taking WTC pictures and I went straight to the top to do it.
My girlfriend and I decided to go to the towers and have a magnificent shoot on Tower 1. Before we got there, however, we had a HUGE argument about something (I have NO idea what it was), but it put me in a HORRIBLE mood – so much so that I didn’t even want to take pictures.
At ground level, I took ONE shot (the above pic). Since we were already there, we decided to at least go up and look. When we did, I found that with that view before my eyes, I could not NOT take pictures, so I grudgingly took a few.
It’s a good thing I did, because I never got to go back up there.
Here they are:
East River, Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge:
Looking north to the Empire State Building:
Turning slightly to the left, this one includes the Hudson River and New Jersey:
Lastly, this one shows the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Island), Ellis Island and New Jersey:
1982
I wasn’t kidding about shooting from land, sea and AIR. The whole story is here: https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=620. Basically, for my sister’s 23rd birthday, I hired a seaplane to take her (and the same GF) and my camera on a short flight down to and around the Statue of Liberty and up the Hudson River past all the NYC sights, starting with the World Trade Center.
We approach the WTC and go past it:
The plane rocked a bit from side to side, so I took this shot when my side dipped (or was it just bad timing? Nah……….couldn’t be):
Although it was a bright, sunny day – and I was using beautiful Kodachrome film – the pictures all had a greenish cast to them. I took a lot of it out, but not all……….otherwise, I’d be left with B&W photos. It turns out that the plane’s windows were tinted green.
But then I found another (smaller) shot that – sequentially – would have been next and whose exposure looks a lot more normal:
I can’t explain it, but I really haven’t had time to get into a major search.
1985
I had three occasions to photograph the WTC in 1985. On the first one (May 14), I was back up in the air………..actually 65 floors up, shooting a daytime event in the RCA Building’s Rainbow Room.
From my angle, I noticed both the Empire State building – 15 blocks south of me – AND the WTC – about 3 miles from the ESB.
As you saw previously, I shot the ESB (34th St) from the WTC in 1977, so now I get to shoot both from the RCA Building (49th St):
I was assigned to cover a July 4 event (the finish of some cross-country race) down near the WTC. Somebody was handing out Statue of Liberty crowns and my friend Hazel got one. Noticing what stood behind her, I thought what could be a more patriotic shot on the 4th of July than a smiling red, white and blue Lady Liberty in front of the World Trade Center?
On November 1, 1985, I took what is probably my favorite photo. Before I post it, I have to tell you that it’s part of its own sequence: shown here, it’s third in a shoot that involved the WTC, the moon and fireworks over both the Hudson and East Rivers on both sides of Manhattan.
First shot: Moon has just risen to the left of the WTC:
Second shot: Moon is now between the two towers:
Third shot (the money shot)……here’s the picture and the story behind it, as it appears on my site:
Taken from good ol’ New Jersey (Liberty State Park), Jersey City, NJ 1985
Probably my favorite shot, a golden-framed, poster-sized copy hung over my parents’ fireplace for a dozen years and now hangs over my couch.
NOT doing what everybody else did got me this shot.
It started at the Hard Rock Cafe in Manhattan where WNEW-FM was doing a week-long series of afternoon broadcasts featuring appearances by various rock stars, called ‘Shootout at the Hard Rock’.
The grand finale, called ‘Shootout in the Sky’, was a fireworks display on both sides of Manhattan in the Hudson and East rivers together with a stirring musical broadcast on the station that was coordinated to the fireworks.
When we finished shooting at the Hard Rock on Friday afternoon, some of the other photographers said to me, ‘C’mon – let’s go down to The Battery and shoot the fireworks’. The Battery is the southern tip of Manhattan (partially obscured in this picture by what I think is a dark Ellis Island).
I didn’t find that to be a particularly well-thought-out idea………..you can’t shoot the fireworks from BOTH rivers at once from there and you’d only have dark New Jersey or Brooklyn for a background, meaning they’d look like any other fireworks shots.
‘No thanks…………see ya’.
Off I went to Liberty State Park, set up a tripod and a radio, and took these shots with the added bonus of a full moon rising between the towers of the World Trade Center.
The Empire State Building is on the far left. What appears to be a horizontal sky scratch AND a squiggly blue line at the waterline are the lights of a small airplane and a boat that were moving and which ‘painted’ on the film while the shutter was wide open – in this case, probably for about 8 seconds on Kodachrome 64.
Post-September 11, 2001 comment: My favorite photo with the 2 fireworks was suddenly ‘the World Trade Towers with 2 explosions photo’ and it freaked me out a bit having it as my main living room picture.
After a few weeks, it evolved into the more-benevolent ‘the anti-September 11 photo’, because it was bright and celebratory, so all is right once again………………at least it is in my living room.
UPON FURTHER REVIEW: Freakout Factor #2 – There are actually TWO planes in the sky!
The one mentioned before has a flight path that’s either going away from or heading toward the upper floors of Tower 2! A second plane’s flight path appears to be going through the smoke under the left firework and is either going away from or heading towards the upper floors of Tower 1!
Fourth shot – Moon is now fully behind the top of Tower 2, rather halo-like:
Fifth shot – I wanted a B&W of the nearly-full moon reflecting on the water after the fireworks were over:
I have never scanned 1, 2, 4 and 5 before. I only noticed the moon sequence while gathering images for this post.
1989
I was hired on April 22 and 23 to shoot stills during a video shoot for the band Accept at the then-deserted Brooklyn Navy Yard (any of you metalheads remember a song called “Balls To The Wall”? That was Accept). The video’s song was “Generation Clash” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOh7hxZFL1s – (I don’t remember it either).
During a break, I walked around looking for interesting scenes to shoot and found this one with both towers and the Manhattan Bridge over the East River:
1990
June 20 (another hire) – this time for the band Heaven’s Edge. This was an interesting situation: the band had done a show for sailors aboard the USS Intrepid – now a Sea, Air & Space Museum – docked at Pier 86 on the Hudson River.
As a kindness, they were offered a short trip on the US Coast Guard cutter Dallas to nearby Governor’s Island, which – at the time – was a Coast Guard installation and completely off-limits to the public.
On this day, five civilians were allowed on the island: the band and me (there may have been a band lady friend or two, as well).
In this picture, we’re on the CG cutter with one of the crew with the Twin Towers in the background (my first “by Sea” WTC shoot):
1997
This is a shot I took from home, as the MetLife blimp attacks the WTC. As you can see, Tower 1 essentially blocked Tower 2 from my view, so it always looked like there was only one tower (though you can see a tiny sliver of Tower 2):
1999
On June 5, I decided to treat myself to a Yankees-Mets interleague game via NY Waterways ferry, which left from Weehawken, NJ in the morning, went south down the Hudson River, around The Battery (southern tip of Manhattan), and then north up the East and Harlem Rivers to Yankee Stadium.
I hadn’t counted on this being my most-prolific WTC shoot ever, but that’s the way it worked out: one direction in the morning and the reverse in the afternoon. One side sunlit in the AM and the other in the PM (and my second “by Sea” WTC shoot).
Since the Hudson River was on the west side of Manhattan – this was NOT the sunlit side in the morning – fewer pictures were taken. Actually, I think this is the only decent one (and the color may have been enhanced a bit):
This was taken as we rounded the southern tip of Manhattan:
After going under the Brooklyn Bridge, this was a must-have shot:
This was probably the most unusual shot on the way to the Stadium. I had never seen a seaplane landing on the East River before, let alone with the FDR Drive and the WTC behind it:
After the game (the Yankees beat the Mets, 6-3), we (I and a couple dozen other Yankee fans) climbed aboard the Yankee Clipper ferry for the ride back to Weehawken. Believe it or not, I was able to get almost the same seaplane/WTC shot, except that it was now late afternoon, the scene wasn’t sunlit and the plane was still in the air and about to land in the water:
As we came around the southern tip, the lighting was just perfect for getting these 6 shots:
This is the sunlit version of the first picture I took on the Hudson River side:
Sometime during that return trip, I managed to tear myself away from hanging over the railing while shooting to get a shot of my travel mates aboard the Yankee Clipper. For you Yankee fans, you’ll notice a couple of them wearing Paul O’Neill jerseys (#21):
2000
I don’t recall what was on fire locally, but the smoke filled in the space between the Empire State Building and the WTC in this “from home” shot. Everything on the bottom is in Hackensack:
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
NOTE: All text is taken from my site. I rescanned the slides whose site images were 300 pixels on the long side (and scanned by someone else) to make them 3 times longer. Some I converted to B&W. Shooting something emotionally-disturbing that’s over a dozen miles away with a telephoto lens makes it nearly impossible for the pix to be razor-sharp – especially when you have to crop the image. Some of these might be a little sharper than what’s on the site, but their true value lies in the stories they tell to the best of their (and my) ability, given the situation.
From my apartment, Hackensack, NJ 2001
I’m not always awake before 9am and I am NEVER out that early, but I had to bring my car in to the dealer for servicing before 9am on that Tuesday morning.
I got there at around 8:40am, spent about 15 minutes at the service desk and went into the waiting room to wait for their car service to take me home.
The others in the waiting room were gathered around the TV, where I could see a tower of the World Trade Center burning.
‘What happened?’
‘A plane hit the World Trade Center!’
At that moment, a replay came on and I saw a plane tear into a tower………except it wasn’t a replay! It was the second plane hitting Tower 2 live on TV!
OMIGOD!
I called a friend and woke him. ‘Turn on your TV!’ I then demanded a driver to get me home fast and got one. On the way home, we both cursed the only name we could think of in that situation – Osama Bin Laden.
I got home at about 9:25am and could see the WTC from my living room window, about 10-12 miles away. I immediately started shooting stills and video.
From my perspective, Tower 1 has always blocked Tower 2 from sight. In this photo, both towers are still standing and burning.
By the way, that terrorist balloon shown that you never heard about was an advertising balloon for Sifford Pontiac in Bogota, NJ. Apparently, they were called by the authorities and told to take it down pronto.
This image is weirdly-cropped because we had a problem with the foreground during scanning, so we just cut it out rather than waste a lot of time.
In this photo, Tower 2 has just collapsed and has begun spreading throughout lower Manhattan. Unfortunately, it is the only view of Tower 2 ever to be seen from here.
Family and friends begin calling, knowing my proximity and my love of the view. One person makes reference to the Superman movie with the nuclear missile headed for Hackensack.
All the while, I’m doing video on the WTC with a TV news soundtrack in the background and taking stills.
I didn’t take that many because the sun was on the wrong side and I figured I’d do more in the afternoon when the lighting was better, never thinking in a million years that the towers would fall.
This is my most dramatic photo of the entire event. Essentially the same shot as the previous 22-002 (it was the next shot taken after 002), this was taken with a crappy 500mm mirror lens and is not sharp.
From 10-12 miles away, you can see the dust clouds of Tower 2 rushing up against some of the nearby buildings.
The darkest lower area is Hackensack, the next lightest area is NJ along the Hudson River and the lightest buildings are, of course, in NYC.
This photo freaks out more people (including myself) than any I have ever taken.
This was an absolutely heart-breaking moment for me not only for the obvious reasons, but for selfish ones as well. It was devastating to see Tower 2 go down, but if Tower 1 stayed up, my view would be the same and I’d be able to think that both towers were still up, since I could never see Tower 2 from my angle, and that NYC was whole.
But NYC wasn’t whole………..it now had a hole known as Ground Zero.
2011
The new tower (r.) is being built (and electrified?). I took this shot on August 1.
On October 1, I saw fireworks going off nearby (though I don’t recall what the occasion was). From my angle, the now-slightly-taller tower is prominent in the background. There’s also a tall crane between me and the lower pyrotechnic bloom:
2014
From my living room on September 11, I took these two shots of the 9-11 lights. In the left one, the Empire State Building is in red, white and blue and the lights have hit a cloud:
2015
In these two “from home” shots, both the Empire State Building and the completed World Trade Center tower are in rainbow LGBT lighting to celebrate the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states (the “Q” wasn’t added until 2016):
2018 & 2019
In these more-recent “from home” shots from 2018 and 2019, the sun sets on the new tower (and on this post):
Well…………..not completely.
I think that the changeover from 9/11 to now can be summed up in the name of the sailboat I photographed during my 1999 “WTC by Sea” shoot:
And – yes – I finished the post in plenty of time.
Thanks for asking………….and for making it all the way through.
LATE ADDITIONS:
It’s now September 11. I’m reading all the 9/11 articles in my newspaper (yeah – I still get one) and I see a picture of a man holding a box of matches from Windows on the World – the magnificent restaurant on the 107th floor of Tower 1.
Wait a minute……….I think I have something like that! Sure enough – in plain sight- in my living room, no less, are a tinier box of matches from the same place and they’re displayed in front of an unopened CD with a horrific image. I’ll get to that part later.
I was never in that restaurant and I’m pretty sure I bought the matchbox on eBay shortly after 9/11.
Here’s the matchbox:
The back of it:
Its contents:
Those are some rough-looking matches. Maybe they were designed to make you stop smoking because you’d get splinters every time you lit up.
I counted the matches……….11. Seems like there was room for one more. Did someone use one, get splinters and decide to sell it?
Who knows? But if you look on the striker side, there appears to be one long strikemark, so…………..maybe:
Now to that CD, which came out 5 years before 9/11. The copyright year (1996½) is from the back cover:
I have nothing to say about it except that I didn’t buy it.
Incredible, memorable photos, especially those of Manhattan and WTC before Battery Park City arose. I like the moon as halo over the towers best from the firework sequence. Nicely done Bob!
-Jeanette