During the September 11 attacks of 2001, a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda, killed 2,977 people, injured over 6,000, and caused at least $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage. Multiple others have died due to 9/11-related cancer and respiratory diseases in the months and years following the attacks, leading the numbers impacted to continually shift to reflect the new numbers.
Some of the victims were able to document their experiences, or the experiences of others, and created well-known images and videos to document the attacks and their trauma. The media produced during and after the attacks were used to help identify victims, for investigations into the attacks and to document the attacks for history amongst other reasons. Many media forms were used, specifically photography and videography from passersby on the streets or surrounding areas, freelance photographers, and media crews around the city. The large spread of images and video along with the lasting impact on the population caused many of the images and videos to be in the top of the list of performances given recognition in mid-2002. In broadcast journalism, the Peabody Awards went to ABC and NPR for their channels' documentation of the attacks, and the Pulitzer Prizes were awarded to six events around the attacks, including two in photography.
Photography
Due to the public nature of the attack, which occurred in a busy location in broad daylight, the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 is said to be the most photographed disaster in history. Potentially due to the sudden and catastrophic nature of the attacks, there was no effort by city, state, or federal governments to document the disaster. The Mayor of New York City at the time, Rudy Giuliani, issued an executive order shortly after the end of the attack, banning amateur photographs of the ruins as it was deemed a "crime scene" and not a tourist attraction.
Many photojournalists such as Kelly Guenther and Suzanne Plunkett, became aware of the scale of the attack after the first tower was hit. Guenther recounted that she ran to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade shortly after the first tower was hit; this is when she noticed the second plane coming in over the Statue of Liberty. Her photo of the plane coming into the New York City skyline was used on the front of multiple newspapers. Plunkett had just exited the subway and was attempting to get past police barriers when the towers collapsed, and she began to run before turning around and capturing those evacuating the area.
Cameras and rolls of film were recovered in the rubble, which were either lost by surviving photographers or near those that lost their lives. These rolls of film and equipment, where possible, were cleaned and processed; many of the photos produced showcase the photographers' final work, notably with the recovered cameras of Bill Biggart. Of the pictures recovered or initially uploaded to company servers, editors had to choose which to include or which would be deemed too disturbing to be published. Of polled photo editors who chose to run images classified as disturbing, for instance those with victims trapped on high levels or falling from the buildings, none chose to run the images on the front page but felt that not running the images would be a disservice to the victims and the scale of the tragedy. One such editor stated:
Other forms of photo documentation of the disaster were not discovered until much later, such as a man's web-camera that had been set to take multiple photos and had captured the disaster.
Some of these images were incorporated into an exhibition of images called After September 11: Images from Ground Zero which showcased twenty-seven images around the world. Other exhibitions of the images were brought together in the form of archives, such as one spearheaded by photographer Joel Meyerowitz under the direction of the Museum of the City of New York to focus on the rescue and recovery work at Ground Zero.