THE TOWER AGE

WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS BY

CHARLES CORS

CONTENTS
Introduction 9/5 9/6 9/8 9/10 9/11 9/12 10/1 6 9 29 54 65 72 107 149

INTRODUCTION

I moved to New York from Virginia in 1990 at the age of 23 and I left New York in 2003 at the age of 35. During the last eight years of my life in the City, I lived at 43 Broadway in Brooklyn. From my fire escape I had a direct view of the World Trade Center and it was on that wrought iron perch that I came face to face with history itself.

9/5

On Wednesday, September 5th, 2001, I crawled out onto my fire escape with a camera, pointed the camera across the East River at the World Trade Center, and began taking pictures.

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The sun blazed across the city and there was not a cloud in the sky.

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At one point I shot a jet airliner as it soared across the metropolis.

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I kept taking pictures as the sun went down just to the north of the towers. In those moments, 9/5 was just another peaceful late-summer night on my fire escape--one among countless others that I'd experienced and documented during my years as a tenant in that building.

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In the light of history, I cannot help but wonder who was inside of those towers on that perfect September evening? Who was on the upper floors? Who was gazing out at that brilliant sun setting over New Jersey? And who among them had only six days to live?

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And I think also about the fact that in the pictures I shot that night, some part of me will always be standing there on that fire escape, standing there, pointing my camera across the river, breathing the peaceful evening air. And the 11th will always be 6 days away. And the people in the upper reaches of those buildings will always be alive. And the sun will be setting on that unbroken skyline forever.

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9/6

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On September 6th, I did not shoot the towers from my fire escape. No, on that day I got up at 8 a.m., and for no reason in particular, decided to walk over to the World Trade Center and take pictures. To get there, I first walked across the Williamsburg Bridge. As I approached the Manhattan side, I stopped and shot a couple of images.

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Then I followed Delancey over to Broadway and turned south. And there I stopped to photograph that legendary avenue--the longest and oldest thoroughfare in Manhattan.

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There were cars and people everywhere. The city was wide awake.

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Soon I found myself entering the plaza at the World Trade Center.

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Turning around I saw a reflection of the North Tower in the black facade of the Millennium Hilton.

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I shot one picture. And then another. And another--zooming slowly in on the abstracted lines of the tower.

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Next I sat down on a bench by the Sphere Fountain and my eyes drifted up toward the sun. And in that moment of peace I was suddenly gripped by a thought: what does it look like to stand in the very corner of one of these giants and gaze straight upward? Then my eyes came down from the sun and settled on the northeast corner of the North Tower.

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In the next instant, I stood up and began walking toward that corner. When I got there, I did something I'd never done before. I leaned my body directly against that structure and looked straight upward. And there, after years and years of seeing those buildings as rectangles, I beheld an aspect of them that I never knew existed: suddenly I saw all the straight lines of the tower converging upon some unreachable infinity, becoming, there in the blue sky of September--a pyramid. And I raised my camera to my eye and clicked the shutter.

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And that was the last image I ever shot in the shadows of those giants--a pyramid.

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9/8

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On September 8th, I again shot the Twin Towers from my fire escape. But on that night, by the time I crawled out my window, the sun had already gone down and the clouds were a deep shade of red.

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And again, as I had done on September 5th, I shot a jet airliner soaring high above New York.

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And then I noticed the shape of a heart in the clouds directly above the World Trade Center.

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When the light was nearly gone, I took one last photograph and then crawled back into my apartment. I did not know it at the time, but that picture, that random moment--those giants reaching up, in silhouette, toward a heartshaped cloud--that was goodbye.

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9/10

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On September 10th, a ferocious thunderstorm rolled across the city. I didn't take any pictures of the towers that day, but the skyline from my fire escape looked very much like a picture that I shot on August 15th, 1997.

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And though I didn't shoot the towers, I did do something else concerning those giants. In the late afternoon, I emailed my sister Carmen the photo of the northeast corner of North Tower that I'd shot on September 6th.

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And this was her reply, which I received 10 hours before the towers came crashing down:

"That picture of the world trade center is crazy! It makes it look like a pyramid. It's the perfect visual expression of that idea... generations into the future, the wtc will be considered an ancient monument. Who knows maybe it will even be in some park or land reserve or even a forbidden area... and with the light on one side and dark on the other...reminds me of the interplay of light and shadow on the pyramid at Chichen Itza on the equinox..."

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9/11

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There's not much to say about September 11th. I got up at 7:00 a.m. Went for a run along Kent Avenue. Got home. Had breakfast. Read the New York Post...

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...Fell back to sleep. Was awaken at 10:20 a.m. by the sound of my apartment buzzer and the voice of a friend telling me to look out my window. Unlocked my window gate. Crawled out onto my fire escape. And there, from that wrought iron balcony, within two minutes of having woken up, I witnessed history.

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The South Tower had already collapsed and the North Tower was into its last few minutes of life.

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After a while I crawled in from my fire escape and tried to watch the news. But since the city's broadcast antenna had stood atop the North Tower, all I could discern through the white noise on my television was the face of an anchorman.

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There are some who say that there was no music that could be listened to on that day. But in the absence of a decipherable TV signal, I went over to my record collection and pulled out an album at random. It was Bob Marley's "Natty Dread." And that's what I listened to on that day.

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And as it played, I stared out of my kitchen window and watched the streams of people walking out of Manhattan on the roadway and the walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge. In the foreground, I could see a few people sitting on a roof--their eyes fixed on Manhattan. And if I didn't know better, I would've thought they were watching a baseball game; such was the surreal nature of that day.

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In the evening, I went back out onto my fire escape and shot more pictures.

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And then the sun had gone down on that day--Tuesday, September 11th, 2001-and I crawled back into my apartment and stood there motionless for a long time, listening to the endless, haunting echoes of distant sirens.

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9/12

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On September 12th, I got up at 8:00 a.m. and the first thing I did was grab my camera and go out onto my fire escape to see if, though some miracle of fate, the previous day's events had been a dream. But no miracle awaited me. Instead I was greeted by the subsonic scream of a United States Airforce fighter jet. The city that morning was a vastly different place than the city it had been just 24 hours before. I struggled to comprehend what I was seeing--and not seeing. The twin peaks of the skyline had vanished.

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Later I bought a newspaper at the bodega across the street and saw the full horror of what had transpired across the river.

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In the evening I went out onto my fire escape and watched the sun set along an arc where the towers had always stood. And with the towers gone, the sun was brighter than ever. And I'm sure sunlight was flooding apartments in Lower Manhattan at an hour of the day and at a time of the year when it had never flooded them before because of the presence of the World Trade Center. And what that must've felt like for the people inside of those apartments--that strangely beautiful light in the wake of all that devastation.

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And I, too, was seeing a sunset I'd never seen before. At this time of September, the towers had always blocked the sun's light. But now the skyline was broken and the sun was pouring clear across Manhattan. And I tracked that blazing sphere all the way down into the horizon. I watched it pass right beside the Woolworth Building along a path where the World Trade Center had always stood. And if I squinted my eyes, in my mind I could see the outlines of those soaring giants lingering there in the radiant air.

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As I crawled inside that night, I wondered if I would ever want to stand out there again. It would always be the spot where I'd stood on September 11th. And that sky would always be the place where thousands of people had died.

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10/1

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On October 1st, a magnificent fall sunset filled the sky and I could not stop myself from crawling out onto my fire escape. Now all the smoke and dust had disappeared and it looked as though the World Trade Center had never even existed.

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For eight years I had stood on that fire escape and gazed upon the Twin Towers. And during that time, those buildings had become, for me, the defining icons of New York. And New York was the place that I had come to think of as the epicenter of civilization. In its heart of hearts, New York was not an American city. It was a city of the earth. But now, as I stood there staring at that desolate skyline, I sensed not the bright light of humanity--but the dark heart of man. Somewhere in that peaceful expanse of atmosphere there had opened up a hell on earth. And I could not shake the images of all the people who had died in the coordinates of that nearby air.

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For them, Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, would never become history. They would never see the pictures of themselves clinging to the ledges of windows at breathtaking heights. They would never hear the recordings of their last frantic telephone conversations. Nor read the heartbreaking transcripts of their final words to their husbands or wives or sons or daughters. They would never know what they looked like in their final, desperate moments, when the eyes of the world were upon them. September 11th was, for them, the endpoint. Nothing came afterwards. They did not go to sleep that night. They did not wake up the next morning. And they would never get to tell their children the story of that day.

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But surely that day will be echoing across the skyline for ages to come. And though the generation that lived through it, will, perhaps, grow weary of it, generations yet unborn will seek it out in the same way that we ourselves seek out the arenas of events that preceded our own fleeting tenure on this planet. And that clear September morning in the year 2001 will take its place in the pantheon of history. And those wishing to stand in the presence of that epic moment--like those before them who have gone to Normandy, France or Hiroshima, Japan or Dallas, Texas or even Kitty Hawk, North Carolina where two bicycle mechanics from Ohio gave birth to powered flight--will need only go to New York City and stand under that New York skyline. For that day in September of 2001 will always be up there, buried in the hallowed air above the island.

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