Description
Life-sized Polaroid photograph taken by Joe McNally depicting NYPD Aviation Unit Pilots Donald T. Gromling and Timothy Hayes. Both men are wearing their uniform jump suits, red life vests, and aviation headsets.

Historical Notes
A unit within the New York Police Department’s Special Operations Division, NYPD’s aviation fleet is based out of Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field, which once served as NYC’s first municipal airport. From Bennet Field, the NYPD deploys helicopters on a variety of surveillance and rescue missions across the City’s five boroughs. On September 11th, severe smoke conditions, flames, and obstructed landing areas eliminated the feasibility of extricating civilians by helicopter from the rooftops of the Twin Towers. Instead, pilots were left with the task of reporting the worsening situation to their command task force on the ground and sharing observations about the apparent weakening structural condition of each skyscraper.

Gromling, now retired and living in Baldwin, Long Island, joined the NYPD in 1989 and rose to the rank of Detective Second Grade before leaving the Department in 2008. Lieutenant Hayes, also retired, had flown helicopters for the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. His service on those dangerous military missions earned him induction into the Distinguished Flying Cross Society, a society run by a nonprofit group of U.S. military veterans. 

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.      

In less than a month, McNally produced several hundred giant Polaroids. Early in 2002, a survey of 150 from the series was installed at Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall. Visitors could walk among them, confronting the figures at life-scale. A companion book published to commemorate the project gave the collection its enduring title: Faces of Ground Zero: Portraits of the Heroes of September 11, 2001. The exhibition toured widely thereafter. On the first anniversary of 9/11, a smaller assembly of the Polaroids appeared at Rockefeller Center. For the 10th anniversary, a larger exhibition was organized for the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle.
 
The 9/11 Memorial Museum has enjoyed a long relationship with these arresting 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 balance of the 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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