September, 2001.2 (detail)
© 2001-2006, Michael O'Rourke

Smoke billowing up from lower Manhattan. The enormous column of smoke dwarfing the skyscrapers disrupts our sense of scale and conveys the scale, and horror, of the devastation. At the same time that it is so horrific, the image is also, if we forget for a moment what it represents, quite beautiful. Shiva. Occasional sheets of paper float through air and smoke. This image was shot the afternoon of the attack.