Keith Meyers joined The New York Times as a staff photographer in 1980. Fascinated by the World Trade Center, he often made the towers part of his photographs. After the 9/11 terrorist attack, he photographed the towers for the final time, making aerial images from Ground Zero that became part of the Times’ team of photographers’ Pulitzer Prize-winning news photography coverage.
When I first arrived in New York in 1980, what struck me was the twin towers.
As an architectural design, they were an incredibly bold statement about an aging city. I ended up using them as my backdrop for a lot of photographs — not just news photographs, but photographs that I felt were evocative of the city.
Japanese artists used to use Mount Fuji as their backdrop a lot, and I guess the World Trade Center towers became my Mount Fuji.
My interest in the towers started because of my interest in the waterfront. It’s a very active place. I prowled it in my boat for years, shooting pictures.
The twin towers, because they were so high, were a nautical reference. We would go tuna fishing miles offshore, and when we came back the first thing you would see of the city was the tops of the towers sticking up over the horizon. We used to see them, I think, almost 20 to 30 miles offshore.
One of my editors called me once and said, “You know, we’re really getting sick and tired of seeing the World Trade towers in those photos.”
I said: “Oh, yeah, really? OK.” From that day on, I tried to make sure that every photo I ever took, if there was any way I could sneak the World Trade Center towers in, that they were in at least one photo I sent him.
When I made the photograph of the towers in the fog, I was at Liberty State Park in New Jersey, focusing on the trees and the fog, when, all of a sudden, the fog opened up a little bit and I saw the top of the two towers. I snapped a photograph.
A few minutes later, they were gone. Like they are now.
And sometimes, when I’m down by the waterfront in the fog, I just kind of expect them to be there.
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