Help identify the people in the 9/11 photo

[question everything]

From Patrick Witty, TIME's international picture editor:


I took this photograph exactly 12 years ago today, just as the South Tower of the World Trade Center started to collapse: a cross-section of New Yorkers, united in terror, standing at Park Row and Beekman Street in lower Manhattan. Since then it’s been published dozens of times in newspapers and magazines across the world, but I’ve never known the names behind the faces. Last year I posted the photo on Facebook and Twitter in hopes of discovering their identities. After it was shared more than 10,000 times, I now know two of them.

Edward Tabile contacted me, saying he recognized his father, Benjamin Tabile, as the man in the center wearing the glasses. Benjamin was supposed to be in the World Trade Center towers that day for a job interview but was running late.

“As I walked out of the subway, I saw the building on fire and didn’t know why,” he said. “I was in complete shock. I would have been in that building while the planes hit.”

I want to know them all. If you recognize anyone in this picture, please contact me at [e-mail].



http://lightbox.time.com/2013/09/11/help-identify-this-photo-the-moment-the-towers-fell/#1

[gopiscrap]

1. wow excellent historic photo!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. What a stunning picture this is!

I hope he finds out who all those people are...

[Mnemosyne]

3. K&R nt

[TorchTheWitch]

4. I don't think it's anyone's business to know their identities

Why on earth does he want to know their identities anyway? So he can harass them for interviews? Since when are people that happened to be captured in a photo regardless of how "famous" it is need to be identified? What if they don't want to be identified? What about their feelings about how horrified they felt when that photo was taken? If any of these people can identify themselves and WANT to be publicly identified fine, but have the damn courtesy to leave their identities alone especially when there is no point to their being identified other than someone's personal selfishness. And what about all the identities of people NOT in the photo that are misidentified by others? It isn't ok to know the identities of people someone THINKS they recognize but isn't in the photo in the first place. Is this git going to harass them for interviews, too?

Leave these people the hell alone. If any of them want to be identified then let them contact him themselves. It's not his or anyone else's damn business who they are. Frankly, I think identifying them takes something vital away from the importance of the photo... a group of random horrified people.

[ashtonelijah]

6. you clearly don't understand photojournalism.

Photojournalism isn't about harassing people or seeking interviews with them. Photojournalists are about capturing the hearts, emotions, feelings, and faces of human beings at moments in time, and in history. It's very important for a photojournalist to be able to put a name to the faces and emotions they capture. It's something you may not understand, but as a photojournalist, I completely understand it. Just having the names being those emotions -- it's important. I've searched for hours and weeks before to find out the name of a woman in a photo I took, whose emotion just overwhelms the photo. Until I had a name, it just wasn't complete. I didn't want to harass her, interview her, or anything. I just wanted to have a name to go with that amazing photo.

Same here.

[TorchTheWitch]

8. baloney

Knowing the identities of the people in this photo takes away from the impact of the photo. Same with the falling bodies photos. Knowing who they were would have taken away much of the impact of the photos. And this is the first time I can ever recall a photo of a random bunch of people all experiencing an historic event where anyone thought it was important to find out their identities. Knowing their identities TAKES AWAY from the impact the photo is intended to make you feel... that could have been me, or my family, my friends, my coworkers, my neighbors. Knowing who they are and that they are no one that you know removes that most important aspect.

YOU wanting to know the identity of the woman in a photo you took of her is your own selfish curiosity. Anyone else who saw your photo wouldn't WANT to know her identity, and it's no one's business what her identity is for either you or the public. Bad enough that someone's raw emotions are plastered on the airwaves and in newspapers for everyone to see without their consent, but actively trying to identify them is just rude. People don't LIKE their inner most feelings being broadcast to all and sundry just because someone with a camera happened to capture them experiencing something extremely PERSONAL, and wanting to identify those people for nothing more than your own selfishness to further strip them bare to the world is even worse.

[uponit7771]

5. +1

[Warren DeMontague]

7. That was, pretty much, everyone's expression right about then.

[Scuba]

9. The woman on the right (with glasses) is Ayn Rand.