Every Picture Tells A Story
"Satan in the smoke"
"The hand of god"
9/11/2001 - 9/11/2020
9/11, 2020
This picture only happened because of the pandemic.
On the nineteenth anniversary of 9/11 during COVID-19, I watched the ceremony from Connecticut. It was hard to find it on television, and I became very sad as the names were recited.
I looked at my wife and said, “I have to go to the Tower of Light tonight.”
At 5:30am on the Louis Valentino Pier in Red Hook, I saw the clouds come down and capture the lights above the city in a view I have never seen before as New York City triumphantly brought the Tower of Light tribute back to the skies above Ground Zero after first announcing its cancellation due to the pandemic.
I felt a calmness and relief I have not had since the attack occurred.
When we had the 20th anniversary in 2021, all the feelings returned just as raw as that fateful morning in 2001. It may as well have been yesterday.
NEVER FORGET
9/11, 2001
By Mark D Phillips
"SATAN IN THE SMOKE"
As I raised the hatch to climb out on the roof, I heard the loudest explosion in my memory. Looking toward the city, smoke and flames were billowing from both towers.
The rest of the day seems surreal now. Bits and pieces stand out over the 20 years. Sitting in front of the laptop sending images of the Twin Towers looking like two chimneys in lower Manhattan, the dust cloud after the buildings collapsed, the intense sorrow when the realization hit of how many people died, the intense relief at the sound of military jets over the city…..I could keep going on.
The one thing I will always be most grateful for is sitting with my wife and daughter late that night having a slice of pizza. So many lives were inextricably changed that day in horrible ways. The fact that we were together and safe washed over me at the end of our Day of Infamy.
We will always remember the Twin Towers — and not just the way they appeared on 9/11. They were beautiful. They were targets.
In 1993, when the first terrorist bomb was detonated in the parking garage, I managed to get in to capture the devastation of that attack. It was horrific as well. Terrorism is a word that should be excised from the language.
I want to remember the Twin Towers in their glory; a brilliant red sunset from under the Brooklyn Bridge with the towers soaring over the skyline; a ferry ride to New Jersey where the Statue of Liberty and the Twin Towers filled my field of view, welcoming me home; a Moon rise that climbed the side of the towers. These are the images that stand out in my memory.
We all changed that day. Unfortunately. evil exists in our world. Somehow I captured an image that embodied it. But always try to remember the good. It is the only way we will prevail over evil.
9/11, Never forget
A Stricken City
Smoke rises from lower Manhattan the night after the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001.
Three days later, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade is covered with candles on the night of 9/14/2001. Smoke would continue to rise from the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan for weeks.
LA times magazine
| changed lives
Maggie Farley of the LA Times interviewed me on the roof of my condo building in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, where I witnessed the 9/11 attack,
