Why Has The Falling Man – One Of The Strongest Photographs in History Disappeared [strong graphics]
Sep 7, 2023
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
Share:
Some dates are defining dates, and everyone remembers where they were. One such date is 9/11. If I asked you where you were on that day, you’d probably remember. One of the photographs most associated with that day is The Falling Man. Interestingly, despite the strength of the photo, it almost disappeared from the news shortly after it was published. Here is some context about the photo:
The Falling Man is a photograph taken by Associated Press photographer Richard Drew. It shows a man falling from the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:41:15 am during the September 11 attacks in New York City. The subject of the image, whose identity remains uncertain, was one of the people trapped on the upper floors of the skyscraper who either fell searching for safety or jumped to escape the fire and smoke.
The Falling Man photo
With the opening of the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan, the Design Observer ran an interview with Henry Singer, who directed a documentary about this photograph back in 2006 – It tells the story of this controversial image: who took it; how it was first published and censored; the responses of the families, and the search to discover the identity of the man in the photograph.
On The Falling Man dropping from coverage
Interestingly, Singer notes that while this was one of the images that stood out on that day’s coverage, it has almost gone away, to the point where Singer decided it deserves a movie:
There were so many images coming across the wire that day but this one stood out for her because it encapsulated the horror of the day. And yet at that paper, and across the country, there was an outcry from the readership saying how could you publish an image like this? This is offensive, our children could have looked at it, and a result the image basically disappeared from sight. It became a charged image very quickly and it disappeared from sight very quickly
Design Observer
Singer speculates about the reasons for the photo going away:
A culture like the United States prides itself on triumph, on winning, on overcoming the odds, on the myth of the city on the hill. It’s a kind of culture — and I say this as someone who grew up in the States and who now lives in Europe — that has to find some form of triumph in the face of a horrific event. And that’s where the firefighters come in. I have to add that is what most cultures do in the face of a horrific event. I think its part of our nature as human beings to wrest redemption from any event like this. Otherwise it becomes impossible to bear.
It is no question that the firefighters became the story that Americans told themselves. And as Tom Junod succinctly puts it in the film an image like the Falling Man, and the reality of the jumpers themselves, just didn’t fit that narrative. It’s very hard to frame them as something that is triumphant.
Singer also thinks that the fact the the image went away was wrong:
The taboo surrounding people who fell from the sky does a great disservice to them and a great disservice to their families. As Tom Junod points in the film these people were swept under the carpet as if they didn’t exist
The full video is available on YouTube, and is embedded at the top of the this article. You can read the full interview with Singer in the Design Observer, and the origins story from Tom Junod on Esquire.
[Editor note: this article has been updated on Sep. 7th, 2023]
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
Related Posts
The Battle We Didn’t Choose – Photographer Documents His Wife’s Fight With Cancer [Strong Graphics]
[Strong Graphics] Big Ideas, Small Budget – How To Create Fun Conceptual Images On A Small Budget
How to create a strong focal point and manage attention inside your photographs
“What A Catch!” Man Rescues Falling Drone Seconds Before It Crashes Into The Ocean
Join the Discussion
DIYP Comment Policy
Be nice, be on-topic, no personal information or flames.
49 responses to “Why Has The Falling Man – One Of The Strongest Photographs in History Disappeared [strong graphics]”
Strong stuff!
The average person does not watch real news and documentaries. Images like this were broadcast on every channel including MTV, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, etc where children might of not even noticed seeing plans flying into buildings etc. It is part of photojournalism.
So powerful, such tragedy…
Powerful and disturbing at the same time. A must see to rock you out of your comfort zone.
The jumpers struck such a cord with me when I was in high school. We watched them jumping during class until the teacher had enough. This image ran in the paper the next day and I kept it. Still have it. I’ll have to watch the documentary.
I can’t stand imagery of 9/11 (especially in entertainment as it has begun to creep into). The reason is simple— it takes me right back to that day and it’s like reliving it all over again. 9/11 traumatized people. If you want a reason for the above photo to have disappeared, that would be it. It is still traumatic for people
… oh yeah, and it’s a photo of someone dying. Most people don’t relish seeing that.
Lolz
…someone being murdered.
But you enjoy all those movies you watch of people being murdered, war movies, movies of girls being taken from their homes, rapped, drugged, and then sold, you enjoy those documentaries about other people’s lives being poorer than you, kids dying in africa on a daily basis, animals being wiped off the face of the planet,
I bet you enjoy buying the latest nike shoes that were made by 10 year olds earning less than $5 a month working 15 hours a day. While wearing those shoes to McDonalds where you buy that chicken burger from a bird that was over feed in their youth with food modified that makes their chests so big they can not even stand up properly and walk around anymore, but thats ok because they will be killed for your pleasure.
I hope 9/11 happens again to you ignorant cunts.
Burying the past simply dooms us to repeat it.
I wouldn’t remember that day, I was 7… and not living in the US, as well as not caring about news. I only learned about 9/11 when I turned 11 because a guy in my class had his birthday on that day. Still, very powerful image here.
I think it should be called the man who jumped.
He certainly didn’t fall.
And neither did any of the others who jumped to their deaths.
They jumped without options, because they were trapped.
Mislabeling the truth is just wrong.
What would he say if he could?
I doubt it would be I fell, but rather I jumped, after weighing my options.
Well, it seems medical examiner’s office said something about the issue: A ‘jumper’ is somebody who goes to the office in the morning knowing
that they will commit suicide. These people were forced out by the smoke
and flames or blown out.”
It makes no difference to them, but I think it’s good to make the distinction, and I don’t think it’s mislabeling the truth. Thousands died that day, and millions in all the insanity that followed. In my oppinion all of them, despite their age, gender, or nacionality, are “fallen”, and even in this particular photograph I don’t think it’s only about the “descend” definition.
Also, there must be legal issues, regarding both the victims and the perpetrators.
I find it hard to believe the medical examiner would make such an idiotic statement. October 24, 1929, aka “Black Thursday”, a number of people jumped to their death in the nearby Wall Street area and yet every one of them went to work that morning thinking their day would be business as usual. Suicide can just as easily be a spontaneous act based on overwhelming factors as it can be something coming from long term depression.
This is an interesting perspective on why the images and others do not appear. I always had the opposite understanding…the powers that be want the event to be forgotten. They don’t want people angry, asking questions or looking for revenge.
“This is offensive, our children could have looked at it”
was someone seriously saying (or even thinking) something so pathetic?
this is the event that shaped western society in the last 15 years. thousands of people died in the event itself and up to 1.3 million but at least 400K people died from what it has spawned.
it was, and rightly so, everything the news spoke about for quite a long time.
and someone was saying “our children could have looked at it” about one of the most powerful and dramatic pictures of the event. one that spoke of how the victims felt.
one of the few actually bringing people into focus.
and how ironic is the fact that, basically, the children they wanted so much to protect from the image were the same ones they sent to fight, kill and die in the wars that followed?
Yeah, echomrg, I remember the outcry against printing this picture extremely well. And I was one who was asking ‘How could you print this picture?!’ WHY? Because THAT “FALLING MAN” is someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s dad! That’s why! How would you like to see YOUR dad, son, or brother pictured on the front page of every newspaper in that predicament?! Not so nice is it? Get a life! Yes, people were offended that this picture got printed. This picture is someone’s very worst nightmare happening. Jeez!
the “falling man” isn’t someone’s son, brother or father.
he is everyone’s son, brother of father, he has become a symbol.
he is someone who possibly made a painful, dramatic and devastating choice.
by hiding him from sight you forget him, you forget that he existed and you forget the choice that he made.
you condemn his choice, because you find it an offense.
you hide his memory, because it doesn’t suit you.
and, even if you don’t think, like Bob below, that he didn’t have any choice, that jumping wasn’t a conscious decision, by hiding his story you tell only a partial story of what happened on 9/11, you’re not telling the whole truth.
Truth is often painful, but if you choose to hide it then you’re not doing Truth any justice.
oh but wait one minute..
Seeing pictures of starving people in 3rd world countries, people you never made any contribution to, is ok, its inspiring, its entertainment on TV to watch a 60 minute documentary about how other people are suffering in this world.
What about the movies you watch about young girls being trafficked for sex (I bet you have seen Taken!) what about all the girls and woman in this world who have actually experienced that and then hear in the press all over the world how a movie based on these events that happen in real life, is making billions in profit!
Get a fucking life Gollikat, wake up and see the real world.
Shaped the western society? OH I AM SORRY do you think the western society is only American?
FUCK OFF, it didn’t shape shit for anyone else. We just all laughed at how pathetic and self obsessed Americans are. Wake up and smell the air boy, there are children dying all over the world every day, animals being wiped off the face of this planet and all can think about is how you like to exaggerate the impact America has on the world…
fag
That was really harsh echomrg. I do take your point about Americans being somewhat inturned in their view of the world, but to say that people laughed … that is going way beyond the truth.
Do everyone a favor. Throw away your keyboard. You are a perfect example of the kind of thinking that makes people hate. I don’t even know you but from what you typed I already strongly dislike your ignorant hateful words. Grow up, or check out!
Troll. You would never say this shit to me in person. I’d knock the taste out of your mouth, boy.
Your very existence gives the lie to your own statements.
For you are proof that this is the most amazing country on earth because even you, a homophobic, narcissistic, navel gazing hate filled mentally ill excrement receptacle with zero sense of national, emotional perspective or proportion is guaranteed the same equality under the law as the rest of us to your opinion with no one knocking in your door to haul you off.
I thank you for this illustration!
Calm down terrorist, you lost.. get over yourself.
You are the type of person that should be censored for their ignorance and mental deficiency. If this is how you talk to strangers – YOU are the problem – not the picture. Just another COWARD hiding behind a Screen-name!
I guess it “disappeared” because it is fake to begin with.
You’re a special kind of stupid, aren’t you?
he probably is.
but there are fake pictures of people falling from the buildings.
for example i just discovered that the one with two people falling holding hands was photoshopped.
maybe he was referring to that.
Are you serious? Do you think this was staged? Are you a denier? Back to your hole, please.
There is always one complete douche bag that has to prove to the world they are a complete asshole. Too bad a name and address aren’t required for posting.
Maybe they’ll sell Falling Man coffee mugs and mouse pads at the 911 gift shop.
Why not? I hear they’re selling earrings. If that isn’t bad taste I don’t know what is. Might as well have Falling Man on them.
the great brother always look for us.
This moved me to tears several times. Very thoughtful film. Thank you.
There are no doctors, no firefighters, no coroners or
medical examiners interviewed in this documentary. The only “experts” are
reporters. The documentary implies and other times has people state that
jumping was an option and choice. The lack of experts seems purposeful or
incredibly naïve on part of the producers. There is not a single person interviewed
who has experience dealing with burn victims.
Why not? I think it’s because true experts would contradict so much of
this documentary in a few sound bites. The man falling is likely burned even
though he is not on fire. It’s not till 50 minutes into the documentary that
the writer admits that the man is panicking and flailing in the air and not
falling in some “Zen-like” choice.
Try holding a hair dryer on “high” right in front of your
face. (Obviously don’t be an idiot. Do not burn yourself.) In a few moments
you’ll move it away because it’s starting to harm you. Are you having some sort
of moral and philosophical crisis as you move the hair dryer away? No, of
course not, you are moving a heat source away from your face. Imagine that
feeling all over your body. You don’t need to be on fire to be get burns, your
skin will start to melt. A hair dryer is about 130 degrees Fahrenheit, the
temperature in the WTC reached about 2000-1800 degrees Fahrenheit. The fire
ball from the initial crash burned some people on the first floor over 1000
feet down near the elevators.
Obviously not every part of the building was 15 times hotter
than a hair dryer but no person can imagine a heat that powerful. It was hot
enough to cause the building to burn and collapse. This is heat you would feel
through your shoes, no protective gear or wet blanket or towel is going to
protect you. Your entire body would try to get away from the heat. It would be
like your entire body touching a hot stove. Your entire body would jerk back
just like your finger would from the hot stove. The plumes of smoke were
stories high, taller than many buildings. Rational conscious thought would not
be something that would come into this. The one reporter “expert” at least
points out that these were not rational people leaning out the window but
irrational. But there is no in-depth physiological discussion about this by a
medical expert. If there were any conscious
thoughts in the final seconds and minutes it would be to get away, just like
your finger jerking back from a hot stove or moving the hair dryer out of your
face.
It’s a shame that no one explained to the Hernandez and
Briley family that the man was forced out of heat and smoke that was
unimaginable.
It’s normal for people to think “What would I do in this
situation?” However this situation is not something previous experience can
prepare you for, nor can previous experience allow you to imagine what it feels
like to walk in someone else’s shoes in this situation. You can’t imagine heat 15
times that of hair dryer. You can’t imagine smoke hundreds of feet high and all
encompassing. There is a fallacy in the thought process in both the documentary
and the original article that there would be thinking involved by those who
fell to their deaths.
What do you think when you hold the hair dryer to your face?
I’ve been to a controlled jet fuel burn for firefighter training. When a pool
of jet fuel is set on fire it makes often makes a mini tornado / column of
fire. When you stand anyway close to it your entire body you will jerk back
from the heat. You won’t think, your hold body with move and you will feel the
hairs inside your shoes stand on their ends. I remember my body moving
backwards. I was trying to take pictures of the training and move closer but my
body basically took over and I remember my body basically taking control and
walking backwards. It’s an odd feeling. I guess it’s like “an out of body
experience.”
To imply that there was choice or that there would be a
luxury of rational thought in this situation is ludicrous.
Also every family member found thousand upon thousand of
hits and images of people jumping. How in the world is finding multiple
articles and search results censorship? It’s not. Every year people talk
about this photo, it hasn’t disappeared.
This article and documentary come across as naïve and
exploitative. If you are going to have a serious discussion about the image
include someone with knowledge and experience with people being burned by heat
and overcome by smoke don’t have a bunch of people guessing about what other
people might have thought. I think the family members should be taken to
firefighter training exercise and experience what it is like to be near a jet
fuel fire, while being supervised by professionals and protected for their
safety.
This will hopefully remove any moral, religious, and philosophical discussions from the equation and they will realize that the only thoughts would be to get away from the heat.
Really good comment!
Thank you for this excellent comment!
Of course the image is strong, however it is not definitive of the day. There have been many pictures of people jumping from burning buildings. A definitive picture, other than the airplane strikes, would be of the deceased fire chaplain being carried away in an office chair. Still, it’s not a photojournalist’s job to sheild the public from reality. The falling man picture is a worthy example to represent a part of the story.
Here is the funny thing. No in this world gives a shit apart from Americans!
So what if loads of people died, they mean nothing to 7billion people else where.
Why don’t Americans give a toss about all the kids dying in this world on a daily basis instead of sitting on their fat ass eating burgers and a peanut butter sandwich with a super size cola.
God Americans really are the crap of this earth.
So, if I stop eating burgers, children starving in other countries will receive nourishment?
What a douche….
So what holier-than-thou country are you from?
Hasn’t been forgotten in the photography classes I teach.
it has dissapeared, cause the NWO wants us to forget. people without history is easily conviced of lies. (sorry my bad grammar, im not english native spoken). peace.
People, including children, need to know that evil exists in our world. This photo illustrates it perfectly.
Powerful, graphic images have always prompted reactions that run the gamut of human emotion, as evidenced by the comments on this piece. Shocking, even grisly, photographs of death and horror–this image, Capa’s “Falling Soldier,” Nick Ut’s Vietnam napalm-girl photo, Eddie Adams’ Saigon police street execution and a more recent shot of a drowned beachside 3-year-old Syrian child having primacy of contemporary place among many others–serve, in an markedly uncomfortable way, the world-can-be-a-terrible-pace mementos. They stop us in our tracks and make us think about our own mortality, even in the midst of a sensory bombardment that includes 24-hour-a-day news cycles, a dizzying world of social media, 250 television channels, a bewildering global landscape whose features, attitudes, mores, and institutions are changing by the second, and, of course, the Kardashians. It makes us more human, if only for the fleeting instant our eyes capture the starkness of the image.
His name was Jonathon Brinley.
Dr Steven Miller from Ripon College recently shared the following thoughts on commemorating 9/11.
There are plenty of tragic moments in American history. Most people don’t hold special ceremonies for Pearl Harbor Day, Emmett Till’s lynching, the Oklahoma City bombing, or Benedict Arnold’s switching teams. Each of these events shook our nation to its foundations, and each — plus the countless more that make up our nation’s history — can teach us much about how America has been made and how it still can grow. But treating such cataclysmic events as dates on a calendar, properly remembered — really, not forgotten — through once-a-year commemoration always simplifies their complexity, catching only a glance of shadow rather than the multifaceted reality that might be worth the effort of remembering. Learning the lessons of our country’s signal tragedies requires studious effort, not posters and a moment’s silence.
But perhaps what’s to be remembered is not the event itself but instead the people who died. After all, that’s why my students put out those 2,996 flags: one for each death. Though it’s the case that a lot of people died, my students didn’t know them. Absent even the tiniest bit of supplemental information, each victim is reduced by this memorialization to a flag, each of them exactly the same as the other. And when it comes to these flags, there’s a further error: 372 of the victims were not US citizens. They included Canadians, South Koreans, Indians, one person from Uzbekistan, and plenty of others. 9/11 was not just an American tragedy. Without mooring these symbols in the reality of the victims’ lives, the remembering is necessarily incomplete.
…. Um… just here for an English essay…. this tea is good thou. (: