On the morning of September 11, 2001, photographer Eric O’Connell grabbed his camera and ran toward the burning World Trade Center.
Within minutes, he found himself inside Ground Zero, photographing a world that had become almost incomprehensible—falling debris, ash, human remains, first responders, and people trying to understand what was happening around them. When the South Tower began to collapse, O’Connell was almost beneath it. He ran into the lobby of a building directly across from the tower as steel, concrete, ash, and debris rained down around them. Believing he was about to die, he curled against a wall and waited for the building to come down on top of him.
Those inside the lobby survived.
O’Connell emerged into the darkness and continued photographing.
A New Reality is an intensely personal eyewitness account of September 11, told through the experience of a photographer who was there as the familiar world disappeared around him. But it is also about what came afterward: survival, trauma, memory, and the struggle to reconcile ordinary life with what cannot be unseen.
Twenty-five years later, O’Connell looks back at the photographs, the ghosts that remain, and the moment when both his life and the world entered a new reality.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, photographer Eric O’Connell grabbed his camera and ran toward the burning World Trade Center.
Within minutes, he found himself inside Ground Zero, photographing a world that had become almost incomprehensible—falling debris, ash, human remains, first responders, and people trying to understand what was happening around them. When the South Tower began to collapse, O’Connell was almost beneath it. He ran into the lobby of a building directly across from the tower as steel, concrete, ash, and debris rained down around them. Believing he was about to die, he curled against a wall and waited for the building to come down on top of him.
Those inside the lobby survived.
O’Connell emerged into the darkness and continued photographing.
A New Reality is an intensely personal eyewitness account of September 11, told through the experience of a photographer who was there as the familiar world disappeared around him. But it is also about what came afterward: survival, trauma, memory, and the struggle to reconcile ordinary life with what cannot be unseen.
Twenty-five years later, O’Connell looks back at the photographs, the ghosts that remain, and the moment when both his life and the world entered a new reality.
