Drew – Lady Bison

Falling Man by Richard Drew (2001)

In my opinion, this is one of the great photographs in the history of the medium. The simplicity of its composition and the enormity of its context give it enormous emotional power. When I view this work, I am horrified, shamed, and thankful all at once. The scores of people that this work represents deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the heroes of United Airlines Flight 93. Yet this work was happenstance, an accident. The photographer, like many others, was clicking away, not really thinking, just to document the events of That Day.

This is a photograph of one of the many people who jumped from the burning World Trade Center towers in New York City on September 11, 2001. The work is very simple. The entire viewing space is dominated by gray, near-vertical lines — darker on the left, lighter on the right. Where the tones change is where one towers ends revealing the other behind it. Lighter lines, the construction joints in the steel wall, intersect these at an angle and act as visual breaks to the eye. My eye wants to zoom up and down those verticals, but these intersecting lines act as speedbumps to slow it down and force my eye to take it all in.

In the upper center, just above the absolute middle of the work, is The Man. He’s small and his vertical form almost mimics the lines. The man falls head-first. His location in the top half of the photograph creates this enormous empty space below. Because I can’t see the bottom, because the vertical lines continue uninterrupted off the picture frame, the space looks endless. My eye is drawn to his black and white clothing which contrasts with the grey background. There is enough detail for me to humanize him. He’s not just a shape against a striped background. This is a human being in an unnatural position, and it’s unsettling. Soon, the grey lines pull my eye to them and guide it downward. In my mind’s eye, I watch him fall through space. Because there is no bottom, he seems to fall forever. The “speedbumps” make him fall in agonizing slow-motion.

The simplicity of the picture keeps my eye and mind focused. There are no bright colors, no distracting shapes or lighting. It’s neutral black and white on neutral grey. It’s geometric and balanced. The smallness of the human form provides scale. The building is massive and dwarfs the man. The space into which he falls is endless. I have read that some think the clothes the man is wearing look like the uniform of the restaurant workers at the very top of the tower. If true, that’s a 1300-foot fall — about ten seconds.

I remember watching news reports that day. I remember the horror when people realized some were jumping from the towers to escape the fires. They were described as scared, desperate people forced into an impossible choice. Some probably were, but as I wrote above, I also think they acted heroically. The people in the buildings were being slowly murdered. Some escaped but the vast majority of those above the impact zones were trapped. Death was certain. Some took back their lives and died on their own terms. Some went alone, like Falling Man, others held the hands of the fearful, gave them courage, and jumped together. They refused to be murdered and stepped into the void.

I am horrified that this and countless others were put into a situation that demanded that choice, and I am ashamed because I don’t know if I could make the same choice. I am thankful to him, too, for rebelling against this evil being done to him.

On September 11^th, I happened to be watching the CBS Morning News and saw the whole thing unfold live from my couch four hundred miles away. I know no one who died that day nor anyone who went to help after, but That Day affected me. It affected everyone who watched it. What the people on the planes and in the buildings went through, I cannot imagine. May we never see anything like that again.