David Handshuh sat in rush-hour traffic. He kept to himself and ignored other cars as he waited for traffic to move. As he glanced up at the clear blue sky, he saw a billowing cloud of smoke. Moments later he heard sirens of a fire truck. As the truck passed him, he swerved behind it and hooked on to the rear bumper.
Little did he know that all 11 firemen in the truck would die later that day, while he would go on to document one of the "single-largest tragedies in American history," he said.
"On Sept 10, I had a vast, half-empty perspective; on Sept. 12, my cup was overflowing," Handshuh said to an audience of journalism students Thursday night as part of the Professional-in-Residence series, which brings media workers from across the nation.
Handshuh, a New York Daily News staff photographer, was at ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001. He said he saw sights he never wants to see or mention again. He said he was in the greatest danger of losing his life, but for whatever reason, he kept taking pictures.
"I had no inkling of personal danger, just that I needed to keep recording," he said.
"I thought I was going to be buried alive," he said, "I lost my glasses, my phone and my pager, but for whatever reason I held on to my camera. I had 90 frames of history on it. I didn't want to lose it." Handshuh was discovered and carried to safety. He was taken to a hospital, where a titanium rod was implanted in his shattered legs . He has been recovering for the past four months. Handshuh showed a video of his pictures and his colleagues' pictures of ground zero. The pictures were of rescue and hospital workers, people covered in blood and ash, the twin towers and people in mourning. "The video definitely made me cry," said sophomore Katie Pfledderer. "It gave me a deeper point of view, closer than what television brought to me." Alyssa Friedman, a sophomore, also felt touched by the video. "The presentation gave me a better understanding of what it would have been like to have been there during the attacks," she said. Since the attacks, Handshuh said he has become interested in how journalists deal with seeing traumatizing images over and over. "Who takes care of journalists?" he asked. "Who is going to help us? The greatest challenge of journalists is to understand that we are not made of steel and that we are allowed to grieve." Handshuh offered several tips to help journalists cope, such as admitting emotions, talking it out and replacing horrible images with positive ones. "It's great to take care of our bodies, but for journalists it's also very important to take care of our minds," he said.
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