9/11 - Powerful Photos

September 11, 2001: The Pictures We Remember

 A New York City fireman calls for ten more rescue workers to make their way into the rubble in this evocative photograph by U.S. Navy Photographer's Mate 1st Class Preston Keres.

 In an image that reflects the Dantesque surreality of 9/11, witnesses watch flames spew from one of the several buildings -- in addition to the Twin Towers -- damaged or destroyed in lower Manhattan. Mario Tama's photograph has a vertiginous feel that recalls the swirl of emotions that we endured on 9/11 and, in a sense, in the years since. In layer upon layer, the image reflects the ordinariness of the day -- pedestrians, bicyclists, trees, street signs -- jarringly juxtaposed against an inferno. As details emerge (the police in the distance, the masks on people's faces, debris in the street), the image evolves from a portrait of mere disaster to a chronicle of a singular, era-defining cataclysm. (Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

 Getty photographer Spencer Platt's picture of a crowd in Lower Manhattan watching the twin towers burn captures, in one instant, the profound disbelief that held sway in the city and around the world -- a disbelief that inevitably turned to mingled rage, grief, and fear as the scale and the nature of the attack on the country gradually became clear. Here, in a sense, is a portrait of the terrorists' true target: young and old, men and women, civilians of countless races and, no doubt, countless creeds who were, mysteriously, spared, only to bear witness. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

 (Photo: Jose Jimenez/Primera Hora/Getty Images)

 A satellite image of lower Manhattan shows smoke and ash rising from the site of the World Trade Center at 11:43 AM on September 12, 2001. The fires at Ground Zero continued to burn for 99 days after the attack -- a bleak reminder, day and night, of the thousands who lost their lives, and the countless millions more who lived, but whose lives were forever transformed. (Photo: Getty Images) Photos from life.com