Two decades on

Marcy Borders by Stan Honda

Freelance photographer Stan Honda had been contributing to the press agency AFP for five years at the time of the attacks. Living in Manhattan, he was able to get to the scene quickly to document what was going on. He describes that morning here

‘ONE OF the other AFP photographers called me and suggested I get downtown. I took the subway line from close to where I live down to the city hall exit. While I was in the subway, the second plane had crashed. So, when I got out, there were hundreds of people just standing looking at the Twin Towers. There was smoke coming out of both of them, which confused me because I had only heard about the first crash.

‘We had no idea what was going on – this was in the days before smartphones. For AFP, I would cover lots of the business and Wall Street stories, so I knew my way around the area pretty well. I started to make my way towards the World Trade Center, and there were probably thousands of people running against the direction I was going in. It was probably the most chaotic day I’ve ever experienced.

‘I was photographing people as they were running and suddenly it became like night’