Two Ends of One Assignment: Mario Tama and Jim Lowney
Every photograph from that morning began with a decision made somewhere else. Before a photographer was on the street, someone at a desk had looked at a screen, picked up a phone, and said “go.”
On September 11, 2001, Jim Lowney was running the picture desk at Getty Images in New York. Mario Tama had been on staff for two months. When the first plane hit, Lowney called him and sent him downtown while the attacks were still unfolding. What Tama found when he got there is now part of how the world remembers that day. What Lowney was doing while Tama was down there -- fielding the calls, moving the pictures, holding a desk together as the story kept getting worse -- is the part almost nobody sees.
We sent both of them the same set of questions and asked for written answers. They did not compare notes. Read together, their responses describe a single assignment from its two ends: the editor who made the call, and the photographer who answered it. That pairing is what this issue is built around -- the picture and the judgment behind it, the person in the frame and the person on the phone.
Their answers have been lightly edited for clarity
HM: You'd spent years trying to get to New York -- coming up every six months to show Getty your book -- and you finally started on July 2, 2001. What did that job mean to you that summer, and what did you know of Jim Lowney before that morning?
Mario Tama: I had wanted to move to New York from Washington, D.C., for years. I knew Getty Images was growing, and I felt it could be a place where I might be able to break in as a relatively young photographer. When I got the offer and started on July 2, 2001, I was thrilled. It felt like a world of possibilities had opened up.
I don’t remember exactly when I first met Jim Lowney, but he was our picture desk manager, so it was early on. I knew he had a great deal of real-world experience as a former photographer. He had covered war in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Northern Ireland, along with a lot of breaking news for newspapers in New Jersey.
I remember having a lot of respect for him—both for his experience and for his perspective on the work we did.
HM: Mario had been on staff barely two months when September 11 came. What did the Getty photo operation in New York look like that summer, and what did you know of this new photographer before that morning?
Jim Lowney: I forgot Mario was still a new guy then. [Laughs.] We were all sort of new. I had been with Getty a little more than a year and had been promoted to Picture Desk Manager about six months before. Mario seemed like a good guy, we had gone for a beer after work, and he was a solid photographer.
HM: What do you remember of September 10th? What did an ordinary day on the desk look like?
Jim: I don't remember much about September 10 at all. It was just another workday. We'd arrive in the office at 9, have our news meeting with the news director, the domestic assignment editor, and our international editor, and decide how coverage would go for the day.
Mario: The thing I remember about September 10 is finishing The Plague by Camus and falling asleep in my little temporary apartment—a converted storefront on the Lower East Side, about a mile and a half from the World Trade Center.
I was about two months into the job then, covering a mix of news, features, and entertainment assignments all over the city. Every day took me to a different part of New York. I was learning a lot, meeting talented editors and photographers, and starting to get a feel for what the city was all about. It was an exciting time.
Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
HM: Tell the story of the phone calls. Where you were, what you knew, what you said, and what happened as you understood what you were sending your photographers into.
Jim: In September 2001 I was living in Queens, but I stayed with a friend on the Upper East Side the night before the 11th. I also decided to get into the office a little early that morning. I was walking west from the subway on Canal Street to our office on Varick. Almost there, looking ahead, I saw a plane fly incredibly low, shining in the sunlight. Reaching Sixth Avenue I looked south and saw that the plane had crashed into the North Tower.
My first thought was, "I don't have a camera." One of the few times in my adult life I didn't have a camera. But that wasn't my job that day. I had to get our photographers there.
I called Mario Tama and said something like, "A plane just crashed into the fucking World Trade Center!" I was excited, standing on the sidewalk watching the smoke pour out of the building. "It's un-fucking-believable! Get down there!" I also called Spencer Platt, and he was on it.
I didn't think much about it. It was a big story, but nothing they couldn't handle. We didn't yet know how the day would change. I didn't even consider not talking to them again as a possibility.
Mario: As I remember it, I was in my little apartment, just waking up. I got a call from Jim telling me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I assumed it was a Cessna plane and started getting ready to head out.
I then got an urgent, insistent call from my assignment editor, Mish Coffey, and then Jim called again as I was rushing out the door. Jim was a seen-it-all, old-school, hard-nosed news guy. He did not get rattled. But this time, the intensity in his voice was unmistakable. He said -- or yelled -- something like, “Get your ass down there now. It’s a 767. It’s un-fucking-believable.”
At that point, there was only one thought- go now.
HM: Editors make a calculation in moments like that: coverage against safety, and you barely knew Mario yet. Was there any hesitation? Is there a version of that morning where you don't make the call?
Jim: No one hesitated doing their job that morning. We were a small staff of news photographers and editors, and we had a story to cover. I think everyone would do the same again.
HM: Mario, did it occur to you that you could say no? Does saying no even exist in that moment -- and what does it mean that an editor's phone call is what put you on the street that morning?
Mario: Saying no didn’t even enter my mind. I’m a news photographer. It’s what I do, and New York felt like the center of the world at that time. In 2001, the newsroom culture was old-school -- I don’t think any photojournalist of that era would think to say no to a story like that. Neither Jim nor I had any idea those towers were going to fall. He made those calls because he was doing his job, and I ran out the door because I was doing mine. It was as simple as that.
Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
HM: Jim, what was it like on the desk as the pictures started coming in? How do you edit history while it's still happening? What did you move to the wire, what did you hold, and how did you decide?
Jim: It wasn't 9 o'clock yet when I got to the picture desk. Some staff were there, everyone trying to figure out the next step. Our news tech guru Robert Giroux was on the phone with our director of news, Mike Sargent, who was out of town on vacation but in contact and directing things. We had televisions on over the picture desk tuned to CNN, and some Getty sales people and staff from other departments were there watching what was happening a mile south of us.
Everything changed when United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower at 9:03. This wasn't an accident. We watched it on TV in shock. A few people gathered around the TVs started to cry. I guess about then most of the other staff decided to leave. Our 17-floor building pretty much emptied out, leaving the Getty Images news team, about eight to ten of us. We all took a few minutes to check in with home and let people know we were OK. A lot of those calls were made by landline, since cell service was not great after the attacks.
Some freelancers started sending pictures of the first plane in the tower. Some of our photo editors made pictures on their way in. Photo editor David Surowiecki went to our roof with a long lens and made pictures. We only moved pictures from photographers we knew and had worked with before. We had people send in photos with the American flag Photoshopped over New York Harbor. Those went right into the trash.
HM: Mario, what do you remember choosing to photograph that day -- and choosing not to? What did the camera let you do that morning that you couldn't have done without it?
Mario: I chose not to photograph the moments when the South Tower came down and the tornado-like cloud of dust and debris was rushing toward me. I was running for my life and fight or flight took over.
I also wasn’t taking photos during the dust cloud blackout but as the dust finally began to clear, I immediately started photographing. The first pictures I took were of the two men I had huddled with. Having the camera in front of my face became a kind of shield. Looking back on it now, the camera provided me with a methodology to document, examine, and begin to process what had happened. The camera was like a crutch, a tool, a force, and a kind of armor. It helped carry me through and allowed me to focus on doing my job.
After the towers fell, nearly everyone where I was downtown was disoriented and covered in dust. In a strange way, we all became one tribe for a moment. I think there was a quiet, shocking realization that we had survived while thousands, tragically, had not. The people I was photographing were experiencing the same fear, confusion, and trauma that I was. I didn’t sense any tension in photographing in those moments—we were all in it together. We were profoundly fortunate to be alive, but it remains one of the darkest days of my life, and I imagine it is the same for everyone who was down there.
HM: Jim, is there a single image from your photographers that day that you knew, the instant you saw it, would outlive all of us? What happens on the desk when a picture like that arrives?
Jim: The single image from that day that outlives all the others for me is Spencer Platt's picture of the impact of United Airlines Flight 175 hitting the South Tower. We all knew when we saw it.
HM: Some of the hardest images from that day never ran. Who should make that decision: the photographer, the editor, the public? And looking back, do you think the visual record that reached the public was honest?
Jim: I don't remember having to make a tough call about moving any pictures that day. And looking back, I think the public got a true visual record that day.
Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
HM: Mario, two of your photographs -- firefighter Gerard McGibbon praying, and the Ground Zero bucket brigade on September 13 -- are among the images by which the world remembers those days. Tell us about the moments around those frames.
Mario: The photograph of firefighter McGibbon was taken on the afternoon of September 11, near Ground Zero and St. Paul’s Chapel. A group of firefighters had gathered there, many visibly drained and exhausted. Mr. McGibbon’s posture seemed to embody the immense weight of what they had gone through. Even now, it is difficult to comprehend that 343 firefighters lost their lives on 9/11.
The bucket brigade photo was taken two days after 9-11. I had climbed to the ninth or tenth floor of a damaged building near Ground Zero. Looking down from a window, I saw firefighters, first responders, and civilians working in a bucket brigade, passing debris hand to hand as they searched through the rubble for survivors. Until then, I had not broken down. But in that moment, I put down the cameras, and I wept. The scene was staggering: the depths of human evil set against a powerful human expression of courage, compassion, sacrifice, and solidarity.
There was also a constant fear that the nearby Millennium Hotel might collapse. Every hour or so, a siren sounded, sending rescuers rushing to safety until an all-clear was given. They knew the building might fall on them, yet returned to the search each time.
It was the first time I felt hope rather than shock -- and the moment I fell in love with the city.
Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
HM: How long did September 11 last for you: days, weeks, months? When did you understand it had changed you? Jim, how did it change the way you assigned, edited, and looked after photographers afterward? Mario, what did that morning teach you that you carried into Afghanistan, Iraq, and Katrina?
Jim: The last of us left the picture desk about 10 p.m. on the 11th, walking out through a ghost town. Most of us were back there at 7 a.m. the next morning. I was at the picture desk at some point every day for thirty-something days.
Mario: I’m not sure there was a clean end point, but it certainly lasted for months. Major anniversaries are still hard. And I was, of course, one of the lucky ones. For many, 9/11 never ended.
I suppose I felt an obligation, as an American photographer who had covered 9/11, to try to cover the wars that followed in Afghanistan and Iraq. When you photograph a morning like that, part of you feels like you are supposed to follow the story, driven by reasons you can’t quite understand or articulate. But going through Hurricane Katrina was different. It was another major catastrophe on American soil, and I felt I could document the crisis more effectively than foreign conflicts. I felt a profound responsibility to keep returning -- to document not only the devastation, but the long road to recovery, a process we all witnessed in New York.
HM: When did you and Mario next speak after that morning? In the twenty-five years since, have the two of you ever really talked about that day?
Jim: I hadn't really worried about our photographers that morning until the towers collapsed. Spencer was the first to make contact. But we couldn't get in touch with Mario, and I was the one who told him to get down there. He was on my mind for hours, until he called from a pay phone to say he was all right. He had been caught in the collapse. He'd lost a camera, but he was all right. I told him something like, "I've never been so happy to hear your voice." When he made it back to the office I gave him a massive hug.
We worked on the story for weeks and months after. He was at my wedding in 2007. We haven't seen each other for a few years now, but we always make sure to connect on September 11.
Mario: I don’t remember exactly when Jim and I next spoke, but I’m pretty sure I saw him back at the office later that day. I think he hugged me.
We talked about it afterwards. I don’t remember the details of those conversations, but we will always share that 9/11 bond and, around six years later, I had the privilege of attending Jim’s wedding. Jim calls or texts me almost every September 11th, and it means a lot to me.
Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
HM: Children born on September 11, 2001, turn twenty-five this year. When they encounter these photographs with no memory of the day, what do you want the images to do?
Jim: I think someone who wasn't born 25 years ago can look at all the pictures from that day and understand and learn what happened.
Mario: I hope these photographs continue to inform our collective memory of the event and remind people—especially those with no personal memory of that day—of what New York and the country went through: both the depths of evil and the extraordinary courage, resilience and solidarity people showed in the midst of crisis. I hope the images encourage people to visit New York, to spend time at the memorial and museum, and to learn about what happened. And I hope they help honor those who were lost.
HM: Jim, if the attacks happened today, every phone on the street would be a camera and the pictures would move before any desk touched them. What stood between the event and the public in 2001, and what was lost or gained when that disappeared?
Jim: If it happened today, we'd be washed in images, maybe shedding light on things we missed. But 25 years ago, I was working with experienced, trained professionals who covered the story with everything they had. We told the story with quality and integrity.