- Title: September 11 attacks fuse photographer and survivor in trauma
- Date: 9th September 2021
- Summary: VARIOUS OF STAPLETON TAKING PHOTO OF BERGERON, CHECKING PHOTO
- Embargoed: 23rd September 2021 11:11
- Keywords: 9/11 Reuters Shannon Stapleton World Trade Center photojournalism
- Location: NEW YORK + PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK + SUWANEE, GEORGIA, UNITED STATES
- City: NEW YORK + PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK + SUWANEE, GEORGIA, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace,United States,Editors' Choice
- Reuters ID: LVA00CETZYY4N
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: At 9:59 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, the World Trade Center South Tower fell. About 15 minutes later, photographer Shannon Stapleton scrambled over debris, peering through dust and smoke for pictures near the still-standing but crippled North Tower.
Stapleton, then a freelancer for Reuters, took a series of images that came to define the day. As he started taking photographs, he noticed a group of first responders carrying a victim.
The man being carried was in fact, Mychal Judge, the chaplain of the New York Fire Department who came to be identified as patient 0001 of the attacks.
"I had no idea who he was," Stapleton said in an interview. "Unfortunately, I knew what a dead person looks like. But he looked at peace."
He also made a few frames of a group of people emerging from what remained of the building's lobby.
In the middle of the group, a blonde woman clutches a jacket to her face. The corners of her mouth are turned down, her eyes downcast.
Kayla Bergeron, head of public relations for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the buildings, had just made her way down 68 darkened and flooded flights of stairs. It had taken her nearly an hour to reach the bottom.
Just before leaving the stairwell, Bergeron remembers seeing a bright light ahead of her, and she was filled with hope that she would escape the building with her life. She stepped into the light, but couldn't see anything, so thick was the dust and smoke from the South Tower.
That light she saw was the North Tower's lobby.
There, she heard a voice telling her to follow the footsteps in the dust. She stumbled her way along, following the marks left by others who had already escaped.
She didn't see Stapleton take the pictures of her and the other dirt-caked survivors.
"I had these photos of the people coming down and, and Kayla [Bergeron] was one of them. And, you know, I had no idea who they were," Stapleton said in an interview. "And I made those photos and, I said to myself… the adrenaline was starting to, the reality of the whole situation was starting to really hit me.
Around the same moment, Stapleton looked at the screen of his digital camera - the first he had owned - and, pleased with his pictures, decided to deliver them to his editor.
Minutes later, after the two left the area, the North Tower collapsed.
Stapleton thinks that if he had been using his usual film instead of having the immediate confirmation of good digital images, he might have stayed on the scene and been there when the tower fell -and become another victim.
The PR executive and the photographer were connected in that shared slender moment and by deep psychological gouges, they both say they've only recently come to terms with.
Twenty years later, they finally met, brought together by that picture. Both say they're humbled by what happened to them on that day and what followed.
Although Stapleton's picture was published throughout the world, Bergeron didn't realize it existed for several weeks after the attack. Her sister happened to see it in People magazine, Bergeron says.
Bergeron kept working at the Port Authority for nearly six more years. She helped shepherd the organization through the immediate crisis and then to the rebuilding of the 1,776-foot-tall tower that now stands about a block west of the old Twin Towers.
When she left New York, she moved south to head public relations for the South Florida Water Management District, a key agency in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, a multibillion-dollar project intended to reverse damage to the crucial wetland ecosystem.
But there was a near-constant anxiety that ate at her.
And there were night tremors and flashes of light while driving.
She didn't pause long enough to contemplate what was happening to her, she says now. And when the anxiety became too much, she self-medicated with alcohol, she says.
For Stapleton, the years that followed 9/11 were filled with professional success.
In 2005, Reuters hired him as a staffer, and for the next 15 years, he traveled from one disaster or conflict to another. He rarely stopped to pause or reflect on that dark day, he says.
He just kept going.
He documented Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans in 2005 and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
He worked in Lebanon during the 2006 Israeli invasion and in Iraq.
He's covered many horrific mass shootings, including the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that left 20 children and six adults dead.
Stapleton says he's made a career documenting death and despair.
He remembers riding on a motorcycle through the streets of Port-au-Prince in Haiti. A boy lay dead on the soft shoulder of the road, his head smashed in.
His pockets picked, his shoes and socks stolen.
In the summer of 2018, he says, it all came crashing down. He could no longer cope with having witnessed so much death across the years, he says. When not working, he says, he became anxious around people and so retreated from even his close friends and family. At work, he couldn't face photographing death anymore.
"[It] really affected me mentally and psychologically, and I went through several years of having very bad dreams," he said.
Eventually, he says, he couldn't even work and took some time away from the viewfinder to seek counseling and therapy.
It was a slow process, and when he returned to work, he avoided the office and his coworkers as much as possible.
His boss, Reuters North America pictures editor Corinne Perkins, would meet him at restaurants around the city to keep tabs on him.
But he was on the mend, finally, he says.
After struggling to find the right therapist, Stapleton was diagnosed with PTSD and severe depression. He takes prescriptions to treat his anxiety and depression.
"Every morning, I say thanks," Stapleton said. "I feel like I'm doing the best work of my life. I'm doing the best photography of my life; I'm doing the best journalism of my life."
(Production by: Carlos Barria, Corinne Perkins, Shannon Stapleton and Dan Fastenberg) - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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