Like everyone else I’ve had a very hard time dealing with the attack on the World Trade Center 15 years ago. Only recently have I been able to look at the pictures I took on 9/11. Shooting for Magnum I just happened to be in New York on that absolutely gorgeous September day. This photograph of a doctor from Roosevelt Hospital walks away in frustration from the horror behind him. One tower had just fallen and of course we all just waited for the second one to go. My assignment from Magnum was to stake out the hospital and wait for the injured. Nobody came. Later I got into ground zero, yet soon I rushed to Washington where another plane carrying two friends of mine from NatGeo and a group of students with them had disintegrated into the Pentagon on board AA flight 81. I was numb then and I’m numb now even writing this caption. I’m not a news photographer. Yet I was obligated to shoot news on that day and besides it’s the only thing I could actually DO. As many have reported prior New Yorkers rose high at a low point of human experience. It was after all war. Conducted directly at civilians just starting work at their offices that beautiful September day. There are more dramatic pictures than mine of 9/11. Yet this lone doctor waiting for injured that never came becomes in hindsight more poignant than some of my work at ground zero. Compared to others I was far away from the falling towers. Yet all of us have scars including those who saw it on tv. So much has happened worldwide in the last 15 years as a direct result of what we see in my photograph. I think we will see even more in the next 15. 9/11 is sadly with us forever. I long for the moments prior when I was having a jovial breakfast with my photo colleague Ira Block and the waitress came over and said ” I think a plane accidentally flew into the Trade Center”. The age of innocence was over. I’m an optimist by nature, yet it’s very hard to put a good face on the evolution of events triggered by 9/11.