Photos: 20 years later, a 9/11 image connects the photographer & survivor
At 9:59 am on September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center South Tower fell. About 15 minutes later, photographer Shannon Stapleton scrambled over debris, peering through dust and smoke for pictures near the still-standing but crippled North Tower. Not very far away, the head of public relations for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Kayla Bergeron had just made her way down 68 darkened and flooded flights of stairs. It had taken her nearly an hour to reach the bottom. She didn't see Stapleton take the pictures of her and the other dirt-caked survivors. "At that point, I heard someone say run, run, run." And she did. Around the same moment, Stapleton looked at the screen of his digital camera, pleased with his pictures he decided to deliver them to his editor just minutes before the North Tower collapsed. The PR executive and the photographer were connected in that shared slender moment and by deep psychological gouges, they both say they've only recently come to terms with. Although Stapleton's picture was published throughout the world, Bergeron didn't realize it existed for several weeks after the attack. 20 years later Stapleton and Bergeron reunited over the 9/11 picture as Stapleton decided he wanted to meet her and in June 2021 he went down to Georgia.
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A group of firefighters stand on the street near the destroyed World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001. Stapleton, then a freelancer for Reuters, took a few frames of a group of people emerging from what remained of the building's lobby.(Shannon Stapleton / REUTERS)
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Kayla Bergeron looks over newspaper clips of her in a picture ran in the New York Times, that she had stored in a cardboard box labelled 9-11, in the garage of her home in Suwanee, Georgia, on July 2, 2021. Kayla Bergeron, head of public relations for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the buildings, had just made her way down 68 darkened and flooded flights of stairs. It had taken her nearly an hour to reach the bottom.(Shannon Stapleton / REUTERS)
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A man walks in the street near the World Trade Centre towers in New York City, early September 11, 2001. Just before leaving the stairwell, Bergeron remembers seeing a bright light ahead of her, and she was filled with hope that she would escape the building with her life. She stepped into the light, but couldn't see anything, so thick was the dust and smoke from the South Tower.(Shannon Stapleton / REUTERS)
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Kayla Bergeron sits with fellow 9/11 survivor and former NYPD officer Ken Marchello at a coffee shop in Cumming, Georgia, on July 2, 2021. Bergeron kept working at the Port Authority for nearly six more years. She helped shepherd the organisation through the immediate crisis and then to the rebuilding of the 1,776-foot-tall tower that now stands about a block west of the old Twin Towers. "I was always high energy. Go, go, go. Never stop," Bergeron told Reuters.(Shannon Stapleton / REUTERS)
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