Some of the most historic photographs of 9/11 are so powerful, they are written in America’s collective memory. One of those photographs came from photographer and New Yorker Gulnara Samoilova. But for as memorable as her photographs are – winning a World Press Photo Award and Pulitzer nomination – Samoilova, in shock, covered in dust and bleeding, says she reacted on pure photographer’s instinct.
At the time, Samoilova was a photo editor working for the Associated Press and living just four blocks away from the World Trade Center. Woken by sirens well before her later shift started, she grabbed several rolls of film, her Canon T90, and walked out the door.
Samoliva, who is now a street photographer and the founder of Women Street Photographers, started taking photographs in disbelief as rescue workers began carrying out the injured. That’s where she was, standing across the street, when the first tower collapsed.
“As I was standing across the street from the World Trade Center, I heard the trembling noise and I lifted my viewfinder. I saw the tower was about to collapse. I took one photo. Then someone shouted ‘run!’ and we all started running,” Samoilova said, telling her story to Projections NYC as part of a multi-day effort to record the history of more than 35 photographers who witnessed 9/11.
“I look back and see this cloud,” she said. “I fell by a parked car so I quickly sat by this parked car, and this cloud of debris and dust just enveloped us. I felt like I was in a tunnel. The impact was so powerful, and then it was dark and it was complete silence to me.”
“Someone was next to me, we were there for a while. I began choking because there was no air,” she said. “I couldn’t open my eyes, I was choking and coughing. He asked, ‘are you okay,’ and I said, ' No, no, I’m not okay, I’m pregnant…I thought I was buried alive. We went from blue skies to complete darkness.”
When the dust cleared enough to see the lights from the emergency vehicles, the photographer, bleeding from a scraped elbow during her fall, looked around and saw the silhouette of survivors emerging from the cloud of dust.
“My photographer’s brain turned on, which I couldn’t admit for the longest time until a few years ago, but I thought, what a beautiful composition,” she said of that moment. “I took one shot, and I blacked out.”
“I didn’t pass out,” she explained, but, in shock, she acted by instinct and blocked much of what happened next. “I changed film from color to black and white, changed lenses. I just started shooting, but I don’t remember it. All my award-winning pictures were next to each other, and I don’t remember taking them.”
“The camera is a shield, like it’s looking in from the outside,” Samoilova said. “That’s how the camera helps me in any situation over my 45+ years.”
In the face of tragedy, photojournalists are tasked with the job of recording history at a time when taking photographs may be viewed by some as insensitive. Samoilova recalled a moment with a police officer before the towers fell. “One of the police officers was yelling at me like, ‘How can you photograph this?’ and I told him, ‘This is for history.’ And I kept shooting.”
Samoilova took 100 frames on film that day on her Canon T90. The following day, eleven of those photographs had been published all over the world, and immediately, the people in the photographs and the family members began reaching out to her.
“They wanted to see my negatives. They wanted to find loved ones. They wanted to find the people that saved them. I would meet with them, and they would share their stories…we became friends,” she said.
“It made me realize how important it was for them and for me, for my mental health too. The importance of having those pictures helped them heal faster, to realize that they have pictures of the people who saved them.”
One of the survivors in the Samoilova’s photographs was trapped in an elevator with her friend. Firefighters were able to help the two friends to safety, but when the first responders went back in, that was the moment that the tower collapsed. One of the women later came to the AP office to look through the negatives in order to identify the first responders who had saved her life.
Samoilova’s story is one of many. In the days leading up to the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Projections NYC interviewed more than 35 photographers about their experience behind the lens during and after the tragic day in American history.
Another round of interviews is scheduled for September 11 at 7 PM ET via Zoom. The interview series will also be uploaded to Projections NYC’s YouTube in the coming weeks.
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For more 9/11 stories, read about the young photojournalist who photographed 9/11 just two months after starting his job with Getty Images.
