The Falling Man, the Fallen Man, and the James Foley memorial scholarship

The Falling Man is the name of the photograph above, taken 13 years ago today. Taken by Associated Press photographer Richard Drew, it shows a man — still unidentified to this day — falling from the World Trade Center’s North Tower on September 11, 2001. Of all the images from 9/11, I believe this one is the most powerful. As theologian Mark Thompson of Moore Theological College says:

“…perhaps the most powerful image of despair at the beginning of the twenty-first century is not found in art, or literature, or even popular music. It is found in a single photograph.”

The photo, for obvious reasons, isn’t shown much. It strikes a nerve that’s still raw. Still, it’s a necessary reminder of what happened and what has yet to be done to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Depending on your point of view, you and I may or may not agree on what should be done in response, but I’m pretty sure we can agree that this day should be remembered.

The Falling Man is also the name of an essay by Tom Junod published in Esquire in 2003. It’s about the Falling Man photo, which Junod describes as “the Unknown Solider in a war whose end we have not yet seen”. It’s still worthwhile reading eleven years later. Steven Church summed it up nicely when he wrote this about the piece:

My favorite sorts of essays are often those that advertise themselves as one thing while performing several different, often contradictory functions, essays where the stakes shift between the first paragraph and the last. “The Falling Man,” does this. It was a feature piece in Esquire, and I think at least part of why I like it is because it seems like the sort of piece that the Esquire editors would have normally sanitized and polished into something much smoother and less interesting, something less intimate and confrontational, less risky, digressive, and essayistic.

Junod’s The Falling Man has a new introduction, The Fallen Man, which talks about a more recent photo: that of American journalist James Foley being murdered by the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL). Like the Falling Man photo, the New York Post’s publication of a still from the video in which Foley was decapitated was controversial. There are many more connections between the two photos, including this quote from Richard Drew:

“I don’t need to see the video the same way I didn’t need to see the Falling Man hit the ground to know the outcome.”

James Foley. Photo from Wikipedia.

Esquire published The Falling Man with the new introduction, The Fallen Man, with a purpose: to promote a memorial scholarship at Marquette University’s J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communications in Foley’s name. You can still read the essay and its new introduction for free, but should you feel the urge, there’s a link you can click to make a donation to the scholarship fund, which I did.