 NEW ANGLE:; This picture of doomed Flight 175, taken on a disposable camera by a fast-acting office worker, appears with other images from the book "Here Is New York: A Democracy of Photographs" in this month's Vanity Fair magazine. - William Nunez |
August 6, 2002 --
A financial analyst saw the first plane crash into the World Trade Center, grabbed a cheapie camera and began snapping pictures from his window - just in time to catch this never-before-published photo of the second jet barreling toward the south tower.
William Nuñez captured the eerie shot on a $15 Kodak throwaway.
"I'm still in shock when I look at it, to think how close we were," Nuñez told The Post. "You don't choose to be part of history - it chooses you."
Nuñez's initial thought was to create a record of a historic moment, similar to photographs he had seen depicting the crash of a B-25 into the Empire State Building in 1945.
But, he didn't know for weeks - until he developed the film - that he had captured one of the last moments of United Flight 175.
Nuñez's photo, which appears in this month's Vanity Fair, accompanies an article by David Friend describing the thoughts and actions of several photographers during the week following the 9/11 attacks.
Friend, VF's editor of creative development, said amateurs and professionals picked up cameras on that fateful day, and some of the best images were taken by bystanders.
Nuñez displayed his snap at "Here Is New York," a show of 9/11 pictures taken by amateur and professional photographers. The exhibit, held in a SoHo gallery, raised money for the Children's Aid Society.
The photos from that display were turned into a book, "Here is New York: A Democracy of Photographs," by Scalo Publishers, due out next month.
In addition to Nuñez's shot, several other pictures from the 864-page tome are previewed in Vanity Fair.
