Leidenschaft für News kostete einem Fotografen sein LebenAm 11. September 2001 ging der freischaffende Fotograf Bill Biggart mit seiner Frau Wendy Doremus und seinen Hunden in der Nähe von Downtown Manhattan spazieren. Ein wenig nach 8.45 Uhr bemerkten sie eine ungewöhnliche Staubwolke am klaren blauen Himmel. Jemand auf der Straße schrie, dass gerade ein Flugzeug das World Trade Center getroffen hat.
Biggart rannte nach Hause um seine Kamera zu holen. Doremus rief Biggart an, nachdem der erste Tower zusammenbrach. Er sagte: " Ich bin sicher, ich bin bei den Feuerwehrmännern und ich treffe dich in 20 Minuten." Er schaffte es nicht die Verabredung einzuhalten.
Vier Tage später erfährt seine Frau, dass Bill's Körper in den Trümmern nahe des 2. Towers gefunden wurde.
Biggart, 54, war der einzige arbeitende Journalist, der getötet wurde, als er den terroristischen Anschlag dokumentieren wollte. Rettungsmannschaften fanden Biggart's 3 Kameras, 2 Kamerataschen, Notizen, Presseausweise, den Ehering und andere persönlichen Gegenstände. Die Kameras enthielten ca. 300 Fotos, die Biggart an diesem Morgen geschossen hat. Etwas von den Filmen war zerstört, aber Digital Bilder von seiner Canon D30 überlebten. ...
Bill Biggart's letztes FotoBill Biggart's Final Photograph
This is the very last photograph Bill Biggart ever took. From the angle of the picture and eyewitnesses' accounts, it seems Biggart was standing under a pedestrian bridge that linked the World Trade Center to the World Financial Center, to the west of the towers. After taking this picture of the remains of the south tower -- perhaps the first ever made of the famous, ghostly, leaning shards of the tower's facade -- Biggart saw that the north tower was about to collapse, and stopped a group of police officers about to enter the area to look for survivors. As debris showered down around them, Biggart and the officers ran for the safety of the World Financial Center. Biggart was the last in line. When the cloud of dust had settled, the officers took a head count. Biggart hadn't made it. "Bill is responsible for saving those [police officers'] lives," Chip East says. But East also says that his friend probably didn't experience a moment's hesitation. "He wasn't there because it was dangerous. He was there because the story needed to be told well."
Source:
They were there 9/11 by Life Magazine
Sources and more:
- Bill Biggart's web site & photos of 9/11
- Dust from the South Tower - Photos of the South Tower Dust by Bill Biggart
- The photo of one of the first Rescue teams with dog here
'I'm With the Firemen'
AntwortenLöschenThey found Bill Biggart's body Saturday among the firefighters. He was a photographer, 54, born to an American Army couple in the divided city of Berlin, and it seemed to his wife, Wendy Doremus, that a thread ran through his work. Bill covered division and conflict: Howard Beach, Wounded Knee, Northern Ireland, Gaza, the gulf war. "When I saw the second plane hit, all I was hoping was that my father didn't go down; I thought, 'God, I just hope he's out sailing,' " his son William said, but by then Bill Biggart was already downtown.
Bill lived just north of Greenwich Village and he loved sailing, he loved trees. He bought people with backyards trees for their birthdays. And he spent so much time watering the trees he'd planted on Weehawken Street, near the Hudson River, that the transvestites who frequented the area were convinced he worked for Greenpeace.
During the attack, his wife called him on his cellphone to tell him it was terrorism, not an accident. "I'm O.K.," he said. "I'm with the firemen."
http://www.legacy.com/sept11/story.aspx?personid=94786
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Ich habe gerade von Bill Biggarts Frau die Erlaubnis erhalten, die Fotos auch wirklich zu zeigen, dafür möchte ich auch an dieser Stelle Danke sagen, es bedeutet mir viel.
I just got the permission of Wendy Doremus, Bill Biggart's wife, to share some of his last photos, as the post had been done already a bit earlier, I have limited myself to the photos here and the one in my other blog
http://die-k-files.blogspot.com/2011/09/vor-10-jahren911-tributesbill-biggart.html
But there is not only 9/11, two photo essays in particular reflect a lot about Bill Biggart's work and what was important to him
The Fall of the Wall in Berlin
http://www.billbiggart.com/berlin.html
And his photos from the Middle East
http://www.billbiggart.com/me_6.html
Birgit