When it comes to the September 11, 2001, attacks, the world remembers the sky. The planes, the smoke, the towers. But down below, on the street, there was something else to see.
That day, dozens of photojournalists ran toward the World Trade Center without knowing how big the events unfolding were. Among them were Bolívar Arellano, a photographer for the New York Post, and Todd Maisel, of the New York Daily News, who took photos that became part of the history of photography. But one in particular makes your hair stand on end and is still archived at the Library of Congress.
For a few minutes, Todd Maisel stopped looking up at the sky and saw what had fallen onto the streets. That was when he saw an amputated hand among cigarette butts and a piece of chocolate.
“I felt it represented everyone who was on the plane”, says Maisel. “It was an anonymous hand. It was something that identified no one as anything more than a human being”.
That day, Todd didn’t see the towers collapse; if he had, he would have lost his life. In an interview, he said he had barely 7 or 8 seconds to run, and although he injured his leg, his photograph captured in a very stark way the traces of those who never made it out of there.