City of Dust

Introduction

Of all the images of the September 11, 2001, attack on New York, the one that’s been hardest for me to shake is not the fiery flash of impact, or the harrowing sight of desperate people leaping to their deaths, or the awesome 10.52 seconds it took for the first tower to buckle and cave in on itself in a maelstrom of concrete and ash, followed incredibly by the second tower falling just as fast, a few yards away. Terrible indeed were those images, but there was also an aspect of cinematic unreality about them that has kept me distant, as though watching a movie or playing a video game. The one picture that has left an indelible scar on my heart is an unlikely photograph that my colleague Eddie Keating took of an elegant tea set ...