The Falling Man Totally Explained

Everything about The Falling Man totally explained

"The Falling Man" is a story about a photograph taken by Richard Drew at 9:41:15 a.m., on September 11, 2001. The story was written by Tom Junod and appeared in the September 2003 issue of Esquire magazine, about the World Trade Center during the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City.
The subject of the image was one of the people (dubbed "jumpers" by the press) trapped on the upper floors of the building who apparently chose to jump rather than die from the fire and smoke. According to the documentary by the same title and the article in Esquire, this picture is somewhat deceptive; it gives the impression the man is falling straight down. In reality, this is just one of a dozen photographs of his fall. In the other photos, it's evident that he's tumbling through the air out of control.
The photographer has noted that, in at least two cases, newspaper stories commenting on this particular image have attracted a barrage of criticism from readership, who find the image deeply disturbing.

Possible identity of the Falling Man

Because of the number of jumpers, identifying the man captured in the twelve photos wasn't an easy task. At least 200 people either jumped or fell to their deaths.
Initially, the faller was identified by Globe and Mail reporter Peter Cheney as Norberto Hernandez, but when the family looked at the whole series of pictures (there were approximately a dozen images), it was clear that it wasn't Hernandez. Three other families claimed that he was their relative, but after careful analysis of the photo this was disproved and the other families backed out.
Five years after the attacks, Jonathan Briley, a 43-year-old employee of the Windows on the World was identified by chef Michael Lomonaco as The Falling Man. Briley was a sound engineer who lived outside of Manhattan, in Mount Vernon, and worked in the North Tower restaurant. According to the documentary he was also identified by his brother in the morgue by his orange t-shirt and shoes. Lomonaco claims that he was able to identify Briley by his clothes and body-type. In one of the pictures, The Falling Man's clothes were blown away, revealing an orange undershirt similar to that Briley wore to work almost every day. His sister, Gwendolyn, asserted he was wearing that shirt on the day of the attack. She told reporters of The Sunday Mirror, "When I first looked at the picture... and I saw it was a man - tall, slim - I said, 'If I didn't know any better, that could be Jonathan.'" A charity has been set up for Briley's family, and many news programs have aired his story as being the one of The Falling Man. However, the identity of The Falling Man has never been officially confirmed.

Documentary

9/11: The Falling Man is a documentary about the picture and the story behind it. It was made by American filmmaker Henry Singer and filmed by Richard Numeroff, a New York-based director of photography. The film is loosely based on Junod's Esquire story. It also drew its material from photographer Lyle Owerko's pictures of falling people. It debuted on March 16, 2006, on the British television channel Channel 4. It later made its North American premiere on Canada's CBC Newsworld on September 6, 2006, and has been broadcast in over 30 countries. The U.S. premiere was September 10, 2007, on the Discovery Times Channel.

Use in literature

The picture plays an important part in the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. The last fifteen pages of his text comprise a flip-book collection of images of a similar man shot by photographer Lyle Owerko falling upwards toward the top of the World Trade Center. Although he isn't the first to make the claim, Foer demonstrates how the falling man is used as a symbol for grieving families much like the "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier".

Falling Man, a novel by Don DeLillo, is about the events of 9/11. The Falling Man in the novel refers to a performance artist recreating the events of the picture seen above. DeLillo claims that he was unfamiliar with the title of the picture when he named his book. The artist straps himself into a harness and jumps from an elevated structure in a high visibility area (such as a highway overpass), hanging in the horrifying pose of the falling man.Further Information

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