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.
Source- Hindustan Times.
