Do you remember this photograph?: The Falling Man

http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0903-SEP_FALLINGMAN

by robg • 18 years ago

27 30 18 years ago

Suicide? With a lion facing you in one direction and a tiger at the other, rushing at the tiger isn't suicide. Stupid fucking journalists.

robg4• 18 years ago

Did you read the whole piece? I thought the reality faced was described in all of its possible dimensions and much more so than I've ever seen any where else.

mynameishere4• 18 years ago

No. I guess I don't think it bears that much analysis. Fire hot, ground far, shit happens.

steveplace2• 18 years ago

There's one mention of the word "suicide" in an article that should have been 1/10 the size.

I don't think that was suicide. The article described his posture and how he wasn't flailing around like the other jumpers. Rather here he falls, staring straight down, saying "fuck you. I choose." In those last moments he refused to have his freedom denied by awful circumstances.

At least that's what I got out of it.

SwellJoe2• 18 years ago

I think I only ever saw it in the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I do remember it from that occasion, however. Pretty memorable photo.

I have no idea what it has to do with startups or technology, though.

helveticaman• 18 years ago

It doesn't have to have anything to do with startups or technology to be here. It just has to be interesting to hackers.

pistoriusp• 18 years ago

In the book, that falling man was the kids father? I read it awhile ago and can't really recall the exact details of his father's death.

SwellJoe2• 18 years ago

No (at least I didn't get that impression). I think it was just used as a symbol for everyone lost. The kids father did die in the WTC.

aslkjdf• 18 years ago

Doesnt belong here in hacker news. Lots of things may be interesting to hackers, that doesnt mean you put them on the tech/startup forum. So keep that crap on digg/reddit and let their community fall apart not this one.

slater• 18 years ago

That, and the fact that the article is horribly written. It's like the editor went "Holy &#!! it's 9/11 coming up! Quick, someone write an article!" half an hour before going to press.

babyshake• 18 years ago

I don't feel that way.

I particularly liked this paragraph:

There was no terror or confusion at the Associated Press. There was, instead, that feeling of history being manufactured; although the office was as crowded as he'd ever seen it, there was, instead, "the wonderful calm that comes into play when people are really doing their jobs."

streety• 18 years ago

"Ed. Note: This article originally appeared in the September 2003 issue of Esquire."

the editor actually went "Holy &#!! it's 9/11 coming up! Quick, what can we post?!" five minutes before going to press.

m0nty• 18 years ago

"Each jumper, no matter how many there were, brought fresh horror, elicited shock, tested the spirit, struck a lasting blow."

That is a seriously overwritten article. There are few things worse in journalism than people who think they're making a big statement, just making the statement bigger. As if they needed to explain what 9/11 did to us all.

steveplace2• 18 years ago

It's esquire. Of course it's overwritten.

TetOn• 18 years ago

"very long rant about the mere premise of this article. Please, for the love of god, let. it. go."

I think you and many others are missing the premise of the article, if you bothered to read it at all. 9.11 is merely a setting for the image. The article is about the image, the inherent "lie" of photography in general, and about people's reaction to images such as this one.

True, this is a famous image from a particularly notable event in recent history, but the same basic article could have been written about many other images, even some of those specifically mentioned in the article itself.

For more in the same vein, check Errol Morris' excellent series of blog entries (http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/which-came-first-...); then re-read the Esquire piece. I think you'll have a different feeling about it coming from that perspective.

sown4• 18 years ago

Re-read article. Nope, still snuff photos.

sown4• 18 years ago

Re-reading this article, it makes me think of the BF Skinner pigeon experiments where he described superstitions. It also reminds me of human pattern recognition and how humans will see things when they're not there.

Perhaps the falling man fell in that way by chance? I guess we'll never know, but let's not draw wild and probably invalid conclusions.

pius2• 18 years ago

Perhaps the falling man fell in that way by chance? I guess we'll never know, but let's not draw wild and probably invalid conclusions.

Agreed, but the article does take pains to cover this very thing. They mentioned that there were something like 11 other photos snapped of the man as he fell and, by sheer chance, the photographer caught this angle in one of the frames. In the other frames, the guy didn't look majestic . . . he looked like a guy falling 100 stories.

sown4• 18 years ago

I read that part time and am not convinced. It's like when people see the image of Mary in a piece of wood or toast. We see what we want to believe.

Do you remember this photograph?: The Falling Man

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