Of all the many images from 9/11 I hold in memory one bit of video stands out. It is of a businessman walking swiftly on West Street, obviously escaping the cataclysm. Were it not for the animation, you might think of the scene as a bas-relief because everything in the photo appeared as gray stone.
The man seems of a certain age, too old for his long stride. He was completely covered in particulate from the fallen towers: his head, face, suit, his arm and the back of his hand on the briefcase (which on other occasions might reveal itself as beautiful Italian leather). The background was thoroughly covered in the dust of the fallen buildings, just as the man was. He didn’t look like a person in shock, but one of remarkable intentionality. Something in the video made me recall my own experience of a mighty dust storm.
In 1951 in Holbrook, Arizona, a dust storm caught up my group. I was the quartermaster with eight other teenagers studying with Ozark documentary photographer Townsend Godsey. We had been making a photographic record of the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, and the native people who lived in it (always with their permission).
We had sufficient time as the storm approached to find a place to park, off U.S. Route 66, for our two Ford F-150s and our canvas covered trailer which contained our tents, cameras, tripods and most of our supplies.
Before the dust rolled over us we piled atop one another into the cabs. The storm lasted less than an hour when we felt we could emerge into the evening air. The first surprise that awaited us was that we all appeared to have no teeth. The dust had penetrated the cabs and coated our teeth with very fine dark brown sand.
Next we discovered the trucks now had a matte finish, as though sandblasted (which they had been). Fortunately, the windows, mirrors and headlights seemed ok. However, everything in our trailer, including the food in our foot locker, bore effects of the dust storm.
Bob Brodsky writes from Rowley.