The Time magazine cover from the week of the Sept. 11 attacks. Screen capture courtesy …
On Sept. 11, 2001, photographer Lyle Owerko's camera bag sat beside his door, still packed with multiple cameras and lenses from a trip to Africa. Jet-lagged, he was sitting in his apartment in New York's Tribeca neighbourhood when the attack on the World Trade Center began.
"I heard the first plane crash.... It sounded so close," Owerko said. The 43-year-old photographer, born in Calgary, raced onto the street and began shooting. The pictures he took were from a street-level viewpoint, bringing an immediacy and intimacy to the horror of the scene.
A 400-millimetre telephoto lens he didn't normally carry but had taken to Africa allowed him to capture the image that would become the unforgettable cover of Time magazine's 9/11 special issue.
"When that second plane hit, I knew that the world changed. You could just feel it. I just knew that the camera I was holding in my hand contained lightning in a bottle."
The 9/11 cover that captured the world
