Rising from the Ashes
As fate would have it, photographer Richard Drew, just 21 years old at the time, would be one of four press photographers present when Robert F. Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968. Close enough that Kennedy’s blood splattered across the lapels of his jacket, Drew raised his camera in time to snap one of American history’s most iconic images; Kennedy, felled by the bullets of a .22 revolver.
On the morning of September 11th, 2001, Drew was, once again, photographing bodies.
As part of a maternity fashion show that day, Drew was photographing pregnant women in New York City’s Bryant Park. While on location, he got a call from his office telling him that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. Quickly gathering his things, he hopped on a subway car heading downtown, the only occupant on the train. Exiting at Chambers Street, he turned west. By then both towers were billowing smoke. Standing between a police officer and an emergency technician he stopped, tilted his camera to the sky and pressed the shutter.
Drew, a photographer for The Associated Press, reviewed the photo later on his laptop back at his office, as he told CBS News recently. The next morning, it appeared on page 7 of The New York Times, and subsequently, in hundreds of newspapers all over the world. The man inside the frame, the “Falling Man” as he was called, was not…
