Manhattan in the Days After 9/11

Four days after the attacks of September 11, 2001 that destroyed the Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan and damaged the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., I traveled to New York City, where I spent a week documenting and writing about the attacks for my newspaper.

In some ways, the city was in shock. It wasn't itself. Police barricades, soldiers, debris convoys, impromptu memorials and galleries of fliers about the missing everywhere, and the smell of the still-smoldering fire in Lower Manhattan ensured that shock was shared.

In other ways, and because New York is New York, the city was going about its business in defiance of the atrocity it had suffered. Irony, cynicism, joy and the sheer will to go on infused the city's autumn air, and before long again overwhelmed it.

The following image gallery is a reflection of those days of spirited survival seen through both my camera's lenses and many of the world's greatest writers who opened their heart to New York--before and after 9/11.