Three firefighters stand atop a pile of twisted steel and debris, raising an American flag above the ruins of the World Trade Center. Smoke drifts through the background.
The towers are in rubble behind them. The landscape is gray, scarred and unrecognizable. Bathed in the glow of the late-afternoon light, the firefighters look skyward, squinting into the sun. Their faces are solemn.
I made that photograph on the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, about six hours after the collapse of the Twin Towers.
The exposure lasted just 1/640th of a second.
Yet for 25 years, the image has lived on in the hearts and minds of millions and has become part of the visual history of one of the darkest days in American history.
At the time, I wasn't thinking about history.
I was doing my job as a photographer for The Record, documenting the unimaginable tragedy. The Record is now part of the USA TODAY Network.
A quarter-century later, the photograph has traveled farther than I ever imagined. It appeared on a U.S. postage stamp that raised more than $10 million for victims of the attacks. It hangs in museums, resides in the Library of Congress, and can be found in firehouses, classrooms, government buildings and homes across the country.
The photograph hasn't changed, but Lower Manhattan most certainly has.
The World Trade Center site of 2026 bears little resemblance to the landscape photographed that afternoon. The southwest corner of Ground Zero – the name that took hold immediately after the terrorist attacks – where three firefighters raised an American flag atop a mountain of twisted steel and rubble, features trees and a row of Citi Bike rentals. Workers on lunch break walk past, oblivious to its historical significance.
The old PATH station has been replaced by the Oculus, a massive, white, steel-and-glass structure that opened in 2016 and has become one of the architectural centerpieces of the rebuilt World Trade Center site. Located beside One World Trade Center, it serves tens of thousands of commuters, shoppers and visitors each day.
The smoke, twisted steel and thick gray dust are gone. In their place, a memorial plaza, reflecting pools and new office towers have turned the site from a place of destruction into one of remembrance and healing. Thousands of people walk through it every day. But beneath the bustle, the traffic and the new skyline, the memory of what happened there never fades.
The West Side Highway, or West Street, once a scene of utter destruction as far as the eye could see – crushed fire trucks, broken steel beams, chunks of concrete and the ruins of office buildings – is now a wide roadway split down the middle by a tree-lined path.
Cars, cyclists and pedestrians pass through as if it were just another New York City street.
At Liberty Street and South End Avenue, I had photographed a man in scrubs sitting alone, head in his hands, as a messenger carried his bike through ankle-deep debris. Gray dust covered everything, and loose papers drifted in the wind. Today, it is a quiet corner leading into Battery Park City, where an ice cream truck was parked.
For decades, the Twin Towers served as a beacon visible from miles away. They helped define New York City's skyline and orient those of us who lived and worked in the region. In their place stands One World Trade Center, a gleaming glass tower that rises defiantly above a skyline that has been forever changed.
From Jersey City, where I watched the towers collapse into a massive cloud of smoke and dust, the view today is dramatically different. It is a beautiful skyline, but for those of us who remember what once stood there, it will never look quite the same.
Sept. 11 is no longer a memory. It's history
Every fall semester, I stand in front of college students who were born years after the attacks. For them, Sept. 11 occupies the same place that Pearl Harbor or President John F. Kennedy's assassination occupied for earlier generations. It is something they learned about in school, watched in documentaries or visited on a class trip.
Many know the photograph before they know me. "What was it like?" some ask.
The truth is that no photograph can fully answer that question.
A week before the attacks, while I was waiting at Newark Airport for a flight to the Dominican Republic, the sun rose behind the Twin Towers. Boarding time was approaching; I hesitated before I decided to pull the camera out of my bag and make a photograph.
I'm grateful I did. It became the last photograph I would ever make of the World Trade Center as I knew it. It's a brilliant color photograph; the sky is a fire-colored, glowing amber, and the towers are in silhouette.
A week later, they were gone.
Sept. 11 morning, just another day in the newsroom, until ...
On the morning of Sept. 11, I arrived at The Record newsroom in Hackensack, preparing for a meeting. Sue DeSantis, the morning news editor, rushed into the photo department and said a plane had struck the World Trade Center. I ran to the newsroom window and saw a huge gaping hole in the north tower.
Within minutes, gear in hand, I was driving toward New York City.
The story of that day has been told countless times, including by me. The drive toward Manhattan as the second plane hit. The impossibly blue September sky. The view from Exchange Place in Jersey City. The towers collapsing. Photographing the injured and shocked faces of those evacuated and being treated at a triage center there. Crossing the Hudson River aboard a police boat. Walking through a landscape that looked more like a war zone than the financial capital of the United States.
What I remember most isn't a single image.
It's the surreal scene before me and the overwhelming realization that thousands of people were buried beneath the rubble. There was also the weight of not knowing whether friends, family members and colleagues who worked in Lower Manhattan had survived.
The debris field of the fallen towers was wide and vast. It was unrecognizable.
I photographed rescue workers desperately searching for signs of life amid the smoldering wreckage.
Around 4:45 p.m., the site was evacuated because officials feared that 7 World Trade Center was in danger of collapsing. I noticed three firefighters attempting to raise an American flag. I moved into position, framed the scene, and made a series of photographs from roughly 30 yards away.
Twenty-three frames. Less than four minutes. Then it was over. The firefighters climbed down, and I continued working.
There was no reason to think the image would become anything more than one photograph among the hundreds made at Ground Zero that day. I never spoke with the firefighters that day, and didn't know their names, nor what their intended purpose was in doing what they did.
The photograph appeared in The Record the next morning, on the cover of Newsweek later that week, and in countless newspapers and magazines around the world. The image went viral before social media existed, and the demand for the photograph – and my time – became overwhelming. The weeks and months that followed are mostly a blur.
There were requests to do interviews, morning news shows, the "Today" show and Oprah. This was attention I was not prepared for. Like everyone else, I was trying to make sense of what had happened to our country and our city. We were also coming to grips with the reality that thousands of our friends and neighbors were never coming home. There was also the challenge of continuing as a photojournalist while managing the unexpected attention surrounding the photograph.
For years, letters arrived almost daily. Many included stories about where people were on Sept. 11. Some wrote about losing family members. Others described seeing the image and feeling patriotism, or hope for the first time that the country might somehow recover.
I didn't return to the Ground Zero area very often. But one afternoon, on the way to an assignment in Lower Manhattan, I wandered past the site and noticed street vendors selling photographs of the Twin Towers and Ground Zero, and, to my surprise, my flag-raising image.
One vendor saw me studying the photograph and asked if I'd like to buy a copy.
"No, thanks," I replied. "I already have one."
The first anniversary in 'The Pit'
One of the most emotional assignments I ever covered was the first-anniversary remembrance at Ground Zero in 2002 and photographing family members gathered around the massive excavation site known as "The Pit."
In many ways, it was harder than covering Sept. 11 itself. The shock had worn off. The reality had set in. The Ground Zero site was an enormous, barren dirt hole in the ground.
Family members leaned on one another. Some cried openly. Others stared silently into the void where the towers once stood. The pain and grief were palpable. It was the most difficult assignment I ever had.
One family wore matching shirts that read, "We Love You, Jim." I made photographs of them from a distance. Only later did I learn that they were honoring James Brian Reilly, a bond trader who was killed on Sept. 11. Reilly had attended my high school in Huntington Station, New York. Out of the thousands of people who died that day, it was a reminder that the tragedy touched people and communities everywhere, including my own.
That discovery has stayed with me.
Ground Zero, 25 years later
The World Trade Center site, which took more than a decade to rebuild, has been transformed into something few could have imagined in the days after the attacks.
It is now a memorial, a museum, a bustling business district, a futuristic transportation hub known as the Oculus, and a massive tower that has become the visual centerpiece of the rebuilt skyline – all at a cost of more than $20 billion, making it one of the most expensive construction projects in history.
The National September 11 Memorial opened on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, in 2011. The two vast reflecting pools sit within the footprints of the Twin Towers; their edges are lined in bronze with the names of the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks.
The 9/11 museum opened three years later, beneath the plaza. It is filled with thousands of artifacts, photographs, oral histories, and personal items recovered from the site.
Rising above it all is One World Trade Center. At 1,776 feet, a height chosen to reflect the year of American independence, it is the tallest building in the United States. It was built to withstand what the original towers could not. Its steel frame is wrapped around a massive reinforced concrete core and base, designed to withstand blast impacts should it ever come under attack.
Yet despite the crowds, the primary mission remains remembrance: honoring those who were killed, preserving the history of Sept. 11, and educating future generations in a place for reflection and healing.
Recently, I retraced my steps from 25 years ago for this assignment by the USA TODAY Network and returned to the site. It is both respectful and beautiful.
The reflecting pools echo with the sound of water cascading into the voids below, which suggests a peaceful replacement for the terror of men and women jumping from the towers. The etched names remind visitors that every victim had a story and a life cut short. On their birthdays, a single white rose is placed beside each name.
I looked for James Reilly's name, and there it was. I photographed it juxtaposed with One World Trade Center rising above it. It gave me pause.
Before the 9/11 Museum opened, I was introduced to Jan Seidler Ramirez, one of the museum's curators, who chose to display my photograph of the flag-raising alongside two very similar but equally powerful images – one taken by Ricky Flores, then a photographer with The Journal News in Westchester, and the other by Lori Grinker, a freelance photographer for Contact Press Images. We have all become friends through our mutual connection to these images.
The museum is a solemn place. The moment I enter, I'm transported back to that day. I rarely spend much time inside the exhibits. The memories and emotions are still raw, and it can be overwhelming. But I have great respect for the space they have created and for the care taken to preserve the stories and remnants of those who were lost.
The inscription near the museum entrance speaks volumes.
"No day shall erase you from the memory of time."
Those words feel just as meaningful today as they did when I first read them. The ancient Roman poet Virgil is saying that because of their sacrifice, those who were lost will never be forgotten.
When I think about Sept. 11, I think about the firefighters who courageously and selflessly climbed into those burning towers trying to save others. I remember the rescue workers who searched for survivors, the volunteers who showed up to help, and the many who later became sick from exposure to toxic dust at the site. I think about the families who endured unimaginable loss and the communities that came together in the days and months that followed.
I also remember a time of remarkable national unity, when Americans set aside their differences and came together in ways that are difficult to imagine today.
The photograph captured one small moment in that much larger story.
Thomas E. Franklin is a freelance multimedia journalist and associate professor at Montclair State University with more than 30 years in the newspaper business. He is perhaps best known for his iconic flag-raising photograph taken at Ground Zero, which appeared on a U.S. postage stamp and helped raise more than $10 million for 9/11 victims. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2002 for his coverage of 9/11. He can be reached at tom@thomasfranklin.com or on Instagram @thomasefranklin.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: He took the iconic 9/11 flag photo. Then he watched Ground Zero rebuild
