Description
Life-sized Polaroid photograph taken by Joe McNally depicting NYPD 52nd Precinct Detectives Donald Sanchez and Jacqueline Zayas. Both detectives are wearing white Tyvek suits, hard hats, gloves, and yellow rubber boots. They have respirators hanging around their necks; Detective Sanchez holds a rake and Zayas holds a shovel. A bucket is placed between them.

Historical Notes
The Fresh Kills facility on Staten Island, a former landfill slated to become park land, reopened on September 12, 2001, to provide an area for investigators to analyze and further search the wreckage of the World Trade Center. During the recovery period, more than one million tons of World Trade Center material were transported by truck and barge to the Fresh Kills Landfill for sorting. While the Fresh Kills operations were run under the aegis of New York City’s Department of Sanitation, its workforce in the aftermath of 9/11 was populated by shifts of FBI and NYPD crime scene experts, mortuary and forensic specialists from the city’s Medical Examiner’s Office, and vetted volunteers supporting their needs.

McNally’s portrait depicts a team of NYPD detectives from the 52nd Precinct, whose officers normally serviced the northern portion of the Bronx. Donald Sanchez and Jacqueline Zayas described their mission to McNally as combing through World Trade Center rubble while looking for items that might help identify victims. Sanchez explained, “You dig for hours, sifting through mounds of mud and twisted metal. It’s so impersonal until you come across a lock of hair, a shredded skirt, or a photo ID. Then the horror screams out at you, and you feel the pain of those lost lives all over again.”

Curator's Comment
In the weeks after September 11, LIFE Magazine photographer Joe McNally (b. 1952) invited rescuers, recovery workers, survivors, and bereaved family members to a studio in Manhattan’s Bowery district, not far from Ground Zero. Here, the participants were memorialized by a unique Polaroid camera—dubbed the Moby C—equipped with a lens from a U-2 spy plane. This room-sized instrument could capture an exposure of singular clarity on an eight-foot tall piece of film in the blackened studio. Each 90-second session required meticulous staging and absolute stillness. Whereas most photographers were concentrating on documenting the devastation of the attacks downtown, McNally was interested in recording the heroism and sorrow etched into the human faces at the center of this national tragedy. Those who faced the camera were mostly everyday people who sought no special recognition. “They came only with the intention of participating in a project, telling their story, and sharing in the telling of others,” McNally reflected.     
 
The 9/11 Memorial Museum has enjoyed a long relationship with McNally's images. In 2006, McNally donated his portrait of FDNY Ladder 20 firefighter Adrienne Walsh to support the Museum’s nascent permanent collection. When the outdoor Memorial opened to the public in 2011, a selection from the series was borrowed from the photographer and rotated onto view in the temporary Visitor Center at 90 West Street. Annual acquisitions from the Faces of Ground Zero archive have continued, often as gifts arranged by McNally. In 2017, the Museum assumed custody of the remaining Polaroids in an agreement that will result in the collection’s completed donation by 2027.

The image in this record is the product of a color transparency from a Mamiya RZ 6x7 Pro II 120 format camera that McNally positioned to record a shot simultaneous with the Polaroid Moby C’s flash of light. The unique, original Polaroid exhibits a more subtle and creamier tonality.
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