The story behind the photo of the Twin Towers taken 16 minutes before the first impact

David Monderer was in the right place at the right time, but he was too late to tell the story. The meeting with EL PAÍS took place last Monday at a New York café. The first thing he did was hand over a typewritten page: “Here is my story. I preferred to write it because I’m terrible at telling things,” he explained. In that one-and-a-half page was the account of an aspiring photographer who managed to capture a historic moment but failed to profit from it. After years of obscurity, a coincidence brought him back into the light and his work now holds a prominent place at the 9/11 Museum in New York.

The image in question, taken at 8.30 am, is among the last that captured lower Manhattan with the Twin Towers intact before two planes changed the course of history. He took it exactly 16 minutes before the first impact — American Airlines Flight 11 striking the North Tower between the 93rd and 99th floors.

Twenty-five years ago, Monderer wanted to make a name for himself in photography. Pedestrian access on the Manhattan Bridge had recently reopened after more than 40 years, and he thought it was a good vantage point to photograph an iconic New York skyline. He took his equipment the morning of September 11, 2001, thinking the early light would be optimal. He took the picture, but he wasn’t satisfied: there was too much empty sky; he missed a few “fluffy clouds” to fill the composition. So he decided to return home in Manhattan and wait for a more suitable day.

As he was crossing the Manhattan Bridge, he heard a roar and someone shouting: “A plane just hit the World Trade Center!” He turned back and was able to photograph the unfolding story in real time. It was 9.20 am, about 15 minutes after the second plane struck the South Tower. This time the clouds he had missed earlier were there — but they were not fluffy at all; they were completely different from what he had hoped for. The next image is from after 10.28 am, when both towers had already collapsed. “I was in shock. I was 37 years old,” he writes in his notes.

With historic photographs on his roll, Monderer was slow to react. He was paralyzed for about five days before he summoned the courage to go to the Time magazine newsroom, where he knew no one, to see if they might be interested. The editors told him they were — that the pictures were very good — but, unfortunately, he had arrived too late. A few days earlier they would have been of interest, but by then they were focused on the aftermath of the attacks, not on before-and-after images. It was a blow that took a long time to absorb. Later he quit photography, disillusioned by an industry that felt increasingly alien to him with the arrival of digital technology and where he had not managed to stand out.

Years later, he saw a flyer from the New York Historical Society asking citizens who had photographs of 9/11 to send them for their archive. He did so with no expectations. He sent them and forgot about it. Years later he saw the photograph he had taken on the morning of the attacks run full page in The New York Post. He couldn’t believe it. Some time after that he received a call from the 9/11 Museum, which opened in 2014. They told him they were interested in displaying the photograph that Time had rejected. Monderer gratefully agreed and asked for no financial compensation.

Today, this frustrated but finally vindicated photographer is 62 and, by his own account, “a low-level lawyer.” He criticizes the direction New York has taken in the past quarter century, a time in which a coffee has gone from costing 75 cents to five dollars — and that’s on a good day. Apartment prices have multiplied fivefold. Neighborhoods that were once affordable, like the Lower East Side, now host luxury housing. “To me it’s not the same place, even though so many people still come here to chase their dreams,” he says. He says he earns little in his job, because medical problems prevent him from working full time.

He has two magnets of his now-recognized photo on his refrigerator, the kind sold in the museum shop that last year welcomed 2.4 million visitors. Looking back, he thinks his mother — who was an artist and worked as a tour guide — would be pleased to see her son’s work finally exhibited in an important New York museum. She never saw it; she died before that. But he believes that, in some way, his mother is proud.

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