The sky is autumn blue and the street is red from blood where I stand and photograph the two burning skyscrapers. Next to the pool of blood is a large round piece of metal that I guess is from one of the planes. There are also several shoes, a bag and a toy car. Testimony of people who a short time before fled in panic.
In a few days, it will be 20 years since the terrorist attack at the World Trade Center in New York (as well as in Washington DC and Pennsylvania). 20 years that I for a few seconds on that awful day feared I would never experience.
From the window of my 39th Street apartment, I watch a shiny American Airlines jet flying low and wobbly past the Empire State Building. The cloud of smoke from southern Manhattan shortly afterwards tells me that something went very wrong.
When I jump out of the taxi on Canal Street and run south on Broadway, everyone else is running in the opposite direction. I try to reach Håkan Matson, correspondent for Expressen (the Swedish newspaper I worked for then) but the mobile network is down and I can’t get in touch with him (it will later turn out that we were very close to each other without knowing it then).
When I arrive, the north tower has also been hit and there is no doubt that this is a terrorist attack and when a policeman tells me "now they have hit the Pentagon too" I fearfully think that now anytime can happen.
In the camera viewfinder I see how the south tower collapses. I'm too close. If I had succeeded in persuading that police officer at the roadblock on Vesey Street, near Church Street, I would have been even closer. She probably saved my life with her no.
I run away from the collapsing skyscraper, I tumble and drop the camera bag. Up on my feet again, no time to pick up the bag. Still have a camera on my shoulder. Someone pulls me into the Woolworth building on Broadway (which, like the World Trade Center later, was the tallest building in the world when it was completed in 1913).
There, in the same building 15 years later, I get to see my son Lucas on an ultrasound image and hear his heartbeat for the first time. Imagine if I had known that then, that September day 20 years ago when everyday life suddenly became so fragile. Life and death, so close and so far away, in time and space.
In the lobby, a small group of people have now sought refuge. Someone tells us to go down to the basement, but once there a couple of policemen come in and say that it is not safe there as the north tower has not collapsed yet so we are evacuated to the street again. There it is strangely quiet and everything is covered by a thin layer of white dust.
From Church Street, at a safer distance, I see the north tower collapse and then they are gone, the Twin Towers that New Yorkers loved to hate and which for me during my first years in New York, often served as directional signs when I was not entirely sure what was north and south of my new hometown.
At home in the evening, my hands shake when I pour a whiskey. Many thoughts and feelings come at the same time. Manhattan is a closed down zone and the sound of the military fighter jets now protecting us up there in the black sky reminds me that we are under attack.
September 16, 2001.
The following months are heavy in New York. The smell of the ruins, where the fire burns all the way to winter, spreads throughout Manhattan on the days the wind comes from the south. And New York is empty, without tourists and visitors. Much like now.
"Never forget" they say, but how could we fotget even if we wanted to?
September 12, 2001.
Nearly 4,000 people died in the attacks, most of them had just gone to work like any other day but they never came home. 343 of the dead were firefighters. They also went to work, up the stairs in a burning skyscraper of over a hundred floors. An unimaginable heroism.
20 years is a long time but that day is still here. So much changed. The world became different. Maybe I did too.
Me on September 12, 2001. Photo: Håkan Matson
I took these pictures (if not otherwise stated in the caption) in New York between 9:35 AM and 10:25 AM, September 11, 2001. When I now see them, I think of everything I as a photographer should have done different and better, but then I must remind myself that most important is that I got out of there unharmed. And I send thoughts and prayers to all those who did not and to their families.