Description
Life-sized Polaroid photograph taken by Joe McNally depicting NYPD Crime Scene Unit detectives Daniel McKenna, Joseph Blozis (Sergeant), and Kurtis Harris. All three of the men wear their NYPD uniforms and hard hats. Each has a respirator and site credentials hanging around their necks. The men hold upright a shovel, a pick-ax, and a large sifting mesh. McKenna and Blozis have visible dust on their clothes.

Historical Notes
The unanticipated, successive collapses of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, created a vast and treacherous debris field stretching beyond the World Trade Center. Federal terrorism investigators and aviation experts converged on the lower Manhattan crime scene almost immediately to search for forensic evidence tied to the perpetrators and for the black boxes from the two hijacked planes. The New York City Police Department assumed responsibility for the sensitive task of attempting to salvage personal effects from the wreckage pile and, upon identification, return these items to victim families and survivors of the attacks. After the NYPD’s property clerk vouchered and bagged the recovered objects, notification was sent to their owners or next-of-kin along with claiming instructions.
   
Using pickaxes, small hand tools, shovels, and sifters, officers from the NYPD’s Crime Scene Unit tried their best to search the rubble methodically for any physical traces of the thousands of building occupants caught in the catastrophe that morning. As Detective Sergeant Blozis explained during the photoshoot with Joe McNally, "We’re trying to provide some sense of closure to families; for some, it means the world to them to have a wedding band or a piece of a wallet from their loved one."

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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