Reply #34: Review from Aussie paper (SMH)

[Bozita]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/tv--radio/image-too-horrible-to-bear/2006/08/30/1156816968799.html

An image too horrible to bear

August 31, 2006
Page 1 of 2 | Single page

One filmmaker was inspired to look deeper, writes Paul Kalina.

THE September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States was the most televised event in history. For several days, long after the four hijacked planes had met their ends, television channels across the globe suspended normal programming to bring round-the-clock coverage. Such was the intensity and relentlessness of it that psychologists warned of the potential trauma that exposure to it might cause.

But there was one type of image from that day that was deemed too horrific for public consumption, and remains disturbing on the eve of the fifth anniversary of September 11. It relates to the several hundred people - the exact number is not known and never will be - who jumped or fell from the blasted-out windows of the World Trade Centre.

The most arresting image of those who came to be known as "the jumpers" was taken by Richard Drew of Associated Press. It's one photo from a sequence of 12. In it, a man falls head first, his body in perfect alignment with the shining steel bars of the building behind him. One leg is bent at the knee. There is no sign of the carnage around him.

The following day, many newspapers in the US, The New York Times included, ran the photo. It provoked a public outcry. The photograph of a person seconds from death, people said, was too confronting. Drew's picture vanished. In a mass act of self-censorship, media organisations withheld the image.

But that image, and others depicting people falling to their deaths, has remained etched in the minds of some.

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