Standing outside a J&R electronics store in Lower Manhattan on the morning of September 11 in 2001, I was struck by a haunting silence. The moments after the fall of the first tower were not marked by screams and wailing, but were eerily quiet, with maybe a bleak siren heard in the distance. The one thing I do remember hearing is the faint sound of papers raining down from the sky—papers that were from the offices of the tower that had collapsed.
It felt like time had stopped. Before I ran into J&R to take cover, the streets of Manhattan were completely normal. Just a couple of hours earlier, I had just come home after working until about 3 a.m., covering an event with Lenny Kravitz and Rachel Hunter.
As soon as I got back to my Murray Hill apartment on 35th Street and 3rd Avenue, my phone rang. My first instinct was that it must be a work call, and I told myself: "Yeah, I'm not picking it up. I've just finished work, and it's my first day off after working for six months straight." The ring eventually went to voicemail, and I assumed it was my mom.
But it was actually a message from a colleague, a reporter at photo agency Splash News, saying: "Look Phil, I know it's your day off, but you might want to check this out because the World Trade Center's just been hit by a plane." I immediately turned my television on and switched to the NY1 local news channel, and saw the flames billowing out of the tower. I grabbed my bag and flew out the door in five minutes to get down there as quickly as I could. I fell in love with New York City after my first visit when I was 16, and I knew I wanted to live there.
I later moved from the United Kingdom to Los Angeles, where I worked before I moved to the Big Apple to set up our New York City office as a young 24-year-old photographer. But nothing could have prepared me for how my life was about to change after I flew out of my apartment following the fateful call from my colleague. I jumped on my bike and raced through every red traffic light while trying to figure out what would be a good vantage point to see the tower without being too close.
I went straight to Soho, as I remembered there used to be an amazing view of the towers from West Broadway and Houston Street. I cycled past pedestrians who were just walking around, as no one really knew what had happened. We didn’t know that it was a terror attack.
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