A seasoned photojournalist, Gulnara Samoilova's instincts were to run towards the scene. Looking back 20 years later, she might not have made the same decision.
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It was amazing to see all the people from the hotel bringing out the doors to use as stretchers, and all the sheets. Seeing two priests from a nearby church comforting people. Police officers and firefighters...everybody's working and collecting evidence and talking to people. [At this point], there was no communication [with the Associated Press] yet because the cell towers were on top of the World Trade Center, so my cell phone was not working.
There was nowhere to hide, so I [crouched] behind a parked car. I looked behind me and saw this humongous cloud approaching and it just covered all of us. It was so thick. The air was sharp. It was pitch dark. I started losing my breath. I couldn't hear anything. I think I temporarily lost hearing when the building collapsed because it was so loud. Because I didn't hear any sound, I thought I was buried alive.
When I got home, I started [developing the photos]. I had a dark room in the kitchen, but because it was during the day, I had to develop the film in the bathroom because it didn't have any windows, so it was the darkest room I had. That's when I noticed I had two black and white [film rolls] and one color. I didn't take color photos at the time; I don't know how it got in my bag.
There were buses running, so we got to AP and [senior editor] Vin Alabiso and [deputy executive photo editor] Sally Stapleton were there. Vin looked at my film and he's like,"Black and white?" Because at the time AP only shot color [and I shot in black and white for my personal work]. I think every news organization shot in color only and I said,"I have a roll of color as well, and I think I got the tower collapsing in it.
I wasn't even supposed to be in New York on 9/11. I had a ticket to fly back to Russia [where I grew up] on September 8 because of a longterm documentary project that I was doing at the time, but [I had to cancel]. I didn't fly, and I still have the ticket.
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