A man plunges through the air, the wind rippling his white shirt. He appears poised and at peace with his fate as he falls past hundreds of storeys.
Hours earlier, he, like thousands of other New Yorkers, woke up to a beautiful autumn morning.
Taken by Associated Press photographer Richard Drew, the ‘falling man’ is believed to be 43-year-old Jonathan Briley.
Jonathan worked as a sound engineer at Windows of the World restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower.
‘He is, fifteen seconds past 9:41 a.m. EST, the moment the picture is taken, in the clutches of pure physics, accelerating at a rate of thirty-two feet per second squared,’ Esquire Magazine wrote in 2003.
‘He will soon be travelling at upwards of 150 miles per hour, and he is upside down. In the picture, he is frozen; in his life outside the frame, he drops and keeps dropping until he disappears.’
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web
browser that
supports HTML5
video
Jonathan was 43 and married to his wife Hillary when he went into work on September 11.
He had asthma. His sister, Gwendolyn, told Esquire that when she saw the picture, she knew that if it was her brother, he would have done ‘anything’ to breathe and escape the smoke and heat.
But it was his outfit that made his family realise that Jonathan was likely the man in the photo.
The FBI found his body intact, and Jonathan’s brother went to identify it. In the photo, as the man is sailing through the air, his work uniform flutters and reveals a bright orange shirt below it.
That’s what Jonathan wore to work most days.
Jonathan was buried, but the photo of his last moments, falling past hundreds of storeys in central New York, has become a symbol of what the city lost that day.
His sister, Gwen Briley-Strand, 72, recently told the Daily Mail: ‘There are times when it feels like 25 years but, then again, there are times when it feels like yesterday.’
She said that even if the man in the photo isn’t her brother, he represents all of the almost 3,000 people who died on September 11.
25 years after photographer Richard Drew began snapping photos of people falling from the Twin Towers, the infamous photo is now in a private collection belonging to Sir Elton John.
He said: ‘It’s the most beautiful image of something so tragic. It’s probably one of the most perfect photographs ever taken.’
Jonathan’s sister added: ‘We’re strong believers as Christians that there is an afterlife, and we all will be judged, but God isn’t this vindictive person. He’s a benevolent and loving God.
‘I believe that all those individuals who jumped were caught. Their spirits were caught.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.