Twin Towers Bombing 2.26.1993

On February 26, 1993, while an undergraduate at Rutgers, I was driving in lower Manhattan on my way to the World Trade Center to conduct research for an internship in which I was enrolled. A few minutes before I was to arrive, with the Twin Towers in full site, I learned on the radio that there had been an explosion within one of the buildings. I pulled my car to the side of the road, grabbed my vintage F-series Nikon (loaded with a roll of B&W film) and ran a few blocks to the site not knowing what to expect. As I arrived, an orderly mass of people has just begun to made a grand exodus from the buildings. First responders had just started arriving at the scene.

I just found six long-lost images I took that day (many more are still missing). Though I don't hold myself out as being much of a photographer, the drama of the subject matter here made up for my shortcomings.

In this shot, I got a little too close to the tower, and as glass started raining down (I suppose from people above smashing through windows), I took cover below a pedestrian overpass. From afar, there appears nothing abnormal in the scene. A close look just to the right of the center of the image reveals a smashed out window (it's hard to discern between the window and the aberrations on the print).
- Eric Ascalon