The Mayor of the World Trade Centre, by Helen O’Rahilly

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Sunday Miscellany 8 min 7 chapters transcribed 5 hours ago

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How did Joe’s early passion for photography begin?

Helen O’Rahilly 0:00

My friend Joe always wanted to be a photographer. His brother bought him a thirty five millimeter camera, a Canon AE one programme for his fifteenth birthday. And Joe would buy rolls of film for it from my dad's chemist shop in Finglas. Joe studied photography at Rathmines College after his leaving Cert. But as for most graduates in the nineteen eighties, work was thin on the ground. In nineteen ninety he left for New

0:27

York

Helen O’Rahilly 0:27

to work as a builder

0:28

Helen O’Rahilly 0:29

the glass and steel canyons of Manhattan. Sharing a house in Sunnyside Queens was Joe would get up at five AM to take the subway to the financial district. He lifted and carried Mixed concrete, climbed ladders, exhausting, back breaking work. In the mid nineteen nineties he was part of a construction crew working on a palatial headquarters of a major American bank. Picking up some cement, he stood between two stacks of granite slabs that suddenly moved. Joe jumped in the air to try and avoid them, but two slabs crushed his legs.

Why did Joe switch from photography studies to construction work in Manhattan?

Helen O’Rahilly 1:05

He was lucky to survive his extensive injuries, but could never go back to working on the sights. Instead, when his mobility had begun to improve a couple of years later, he enrolled in a photography postgrad at Hunter College, Manhattan. On the morning of Tuesday the eleventh of september, two thousand one, a brilliant blue sky day. Joe woke to the news that a plane had hit the north tower of the trade centre. He was due in class. Instead, on instinct, he grabbed his nineteen year old cannon camera and headed to the subway, stopping at a badega to buy rolls of thirty five millimeter film. Cheap film, a dollar a roll. Joe had ten dollars in his pocket. He bought ten rolls. The brand name he remembers was Lucky.

Helen O’Rahilly 1:53

He caught the last train downtown before all subway traffic was stopped. Another plane had already hit the south tower. When Joe emerged from the subway at Canal Street, it was a hellish scene at ground level.

What accident ended Joe’s construction career and led him back to photography?

Helen O’Rahilly 2:06

Dust covered bloodied people running north, a huge cloud of dark, impenetrable dust and ash rolled up town. Tower two had collapsed, with countless people trapped inside, and Just fifty six minutes after being hit. Joe walked south into the dust cloud, towards the remaining burning north tower, clicking and clicking his camera. As he paused by the Metropolitan Hotel on Chamber Street, A policeman yelled at Joe to get inside. Tower one was collapsing, and Joe was one of the few left in its path. There's a video clip showing him snapping away as the cloud rolled towards him. Daylight turned to night in a second. A hotel worker handed him a wet towel. Somehow I just kept working, he told me. I can't let the loss and heartbreak into my mind for now.

Helen O’Rahilly 2:59

I just have to show what has happened.

How did Joe react to the September 11 attacks and start documenting them?

Helen O’Rahilly 3:03

He reached ground zero. Carnage and chaos lay in front of him. Seventy foot high tridents from the tower's facades had embedded themselves in the west side highway. Hundreds of high pitched chirps from firefighters' alarms, meaning a firefighter was not moving, permeated the thick air. Lone, dazed, dust caked firefighters called out for their missing crew. Fire engines were upturned and burning, and Filthy pools of water from sprinklers and fire hoses were mixing with a ten inch deep dust carpet on the New York asphalt. Massive fallen steel columns were bent into unimaginable shapes. Joe stepped carefully. A news photographer, William Bigart, lay dead nearby, caught in the second collapse as he took his last photograph.

Helen O’Rahilly 3:55

After hours at the site and having run out of film, Joe retreated, leaving the rescue crews to their desperate bucket brigade searches. He dropped off his film roles at the SIPA photo agency uptown, and exhausted, traumatized, filthy, got back late to Queens. On the twelfth of September, Joe's photos were published around the world.

What did Joe witness and capture at Ground Zero during the tower collapses?

Helen O’Rahilly 4:18

He didn't care about fees or profile. He felt he had to return to document history. He ducked and weaved to ground zero, borrowing a yellow vest and a hard hat to what was now called the pile, the centre of the chaos. He stayed for two days. But by Friday the fourteenth, Joe was done.