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COURTESY BRIDGET HUNTER AND FAMILY
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By Whitney Johnson, Director of Visual and Immersive Experiences
Photographs by Henry Leutwyler
Twenty years have passed, yet it feels like yesterday. I know exactly where I was that morning: in Latin class, seven miles uptown from what would come to be known as Ground Zero.
Photographer Henry Leutwyler was nearby, too. Much closer. He watched the first World Trade Center tower fall from his rooftop at Broadway and Bleecker in Lower Manhattan. His direct connection to this moment in history, combined with his ability to imbue simple objects with emotion, made him the ideal photographer, years later, for a unique project.
Over the course of two weeks, with unprecedented access to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, he combed through hundreds of dusty boxes in the archive, each with close to 20 objects inside. Henry made thousands of photographs. They carry a power and dignity of their own—and some are featured in this story in September’s issue of National Geographic.
While working, Henry’s team wore respirators and gloves for their own safety, and out of respect for the objects being handled. “You have to be psychologically ready to start a project like this one,” he says.
The smallest, most commonplace objects plucked raw emotion. His assistant took one look at a pair of crushed headphones and broke down in tears. (Pictured above, the helmet of slain firefighter Joe Hunter, recovered in the rubble of the World Trade Center months later; below, the work pants that volunteer EMT Greg Gully encased in plastic after his 9/11 shift at the scene, with a note saying “the ash is the remains of those that died, God Bless Them!”)
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