WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT - At 9:59 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, the World Trade Center South Tower fell and photographer Shannon Stapleton scrambled over debris, peering through dust and smoke for pictures near the still-standing but crippled North Tower
Stapleton, then a freelancer for Reuters, took a few frames of a group of people emerging from what remained of the building’s lobby. In the middle of the group, a blonde woman clutches a jacket to her face. The corners of her mouth are turned down, her eyes downcast.Bergeron and other people are helped away from the World Trade Centre tower.
Around the same moment, Stapleton looked at the screen of his digital camera – the first he had owned – and, pleased with his pictures, decided to deliver them to his editor. Minutes later, after the two left the area, the North Tower collapsed. Stapleton thinks that if he had been using his usual film instead of having the immediate confirmation of good digital images, he might have stayed on the scene and been there when the tower fell – and become another victim.
“She’s a big junkie on celebrity stuff, and she sees the picture and can’t believe it,” Bergeron recalls. “I was like a bit binge drinking, OK? I knew something was wrong, but not what. If I would drink something, I wouldn’t feel that anxiety.” “The first time I went to that farm, there was this big, beautiful mare,” she recalls. “Her name was Lily. I’m just talking, petting her. I’m not really paying attention. All of a sudden, she put her head right on my shoulder. And all of a sudden, all that energy that was wearing me down, it was like it was released into the atmosphere.
He documented Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans in 2005 and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. He worked in Lebanon during the 2006 Israeli invasion and in Iraq. He’s covered many horrific mass shootings, including the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that left 20 children and six adults dead.
Eventually, he says, he couldn’t even work and took some time away from the viewfinder to seek counseling and therapy. It was a slow process, and when he returned to work, he avoided the office and his coworkers as much as possible. His boss, Reuters North America pictures editor Corinne Perkins, would meet him at restaurants around the city to keep tabs on him.
“I went out into the parking lot. I smoked like five cigarettes, bawled my eyes out and called Corinne, and she was crying with me. It hit me really, really hard. Death again and again.”
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