Collection: September 11, 2001 , World Trade Center photographs (AP coverage)

Overview
Richard Drew’s “September 11, 2001, World Trade Center photographs (AP coverage)” is a concentrated visual record of the attacks and immediate aftermath in Lower Manhattan, made under the pressures and protocols of Associated Press photojournalism. The collection moves from distant skyline views to street-level encounters, from the spectacle of burning towers to intimate, fleeting moments of human response. It situates the widely circulated images that came to symbolize the day within a broader, chronological narrative of movement, uncertainty, and eyewitness witnessing.

Context and Assignment
Drew, on assignment in New York that morning, was redirected as news broke, joining the stream of first responders, journalists, and civilians converging on the World Trade Center. Working within AP’s fast-moving workflow, he photographed, captioned, and transmitted images rapidly, contributing to the global newswire that shaped early public understanding of events in near real time. The collection bears marks of that urgency: changing vantage points, evolving angles as access closed and reopened, and sequences that trace the escalation from fire to collapse to aftermath.

What the Photographs Show
The images register the day’s shifting scales. Wide shots fix the twin plumes against a bright late-summer sky, anchoring the attack within the familiar geometry of the city. Mid-range frames show streets filling with ash and paper, traffic halted, and storefronts turned into waystations. Close shots focus on faces, gestures, and improvised acts of care, people looking upward, covering mouths and eyes, guiding one another through drifting dust. Firefighters, police, and medical personnel appear repeatedly, their movements carving paths through narrowing corridors of visibility. After the collapses, the frames thicken with gray air and flattened light; landmarks become silhouettes, and the built environment dissolves into outlines and fragments. The photographs avoid spectacle for its own sake, finding coherence in clear compositions and small, decisive details.

The Falling Man
Among the set is the image often called the Falling Man, a single figure in descent reflecting a vertical symmetry with the tower’s grid. The photograph’s power rests in its stillness; the figure appears isolated yet emblematic, an anonymous human presence held against monumental architecture. Its publication sparked debate about representation, dignity, and the boundaries of news photography. Within the collection, it is one moment among many, contextualized by frames that depict arrival, confusion, evacuation, and the labor of response. Seen this way, the image functions less as an icon than as one node in a network of visual evidence about scale, vulnerability, and witness.

Style and Approach
Drew’s approach is straightforward and unadorned: available light, tight shutter discipline, and compositions that prioritize clarity over flourish. Vertical frames echo the towers; horizontal frames open space to show context and crowd dynamics. The pacing of the images, repeating forms with variations, creates a sense of time unfolding, as if the viewer is walking with the photographer, registering the same shocks and adjustments.

Impact and Circulation
Distributed by AP, these photographs traveled instantly into newspapers, broadcasts, and later digital archives, shaping collective memory well beyond the news cycle. They have since served as reference points in discussions of media ethics, public mourning, and the evidentiary role of images. The collection’s value lies in its breadth and restraint: it documents without presuming to explain, preserving the textures of a day when information lagged behind experience.

Preservation and Research Use
Today the images are maintained in news and cultural archives, often accompanied by original captions, timestamps, and transmission data. They are consulted for historical study, journalism training, and commemorative projects, offering a compact, ground-level account of how one photographer, working within a newswire system, saw and recorded an event that altered the city and the world.