Description
Life-sized Polaroid photograph taken by Joe McNally depicting FDNY Ladder 6 Battalion Chief, John A. Jonas. Jonas is wearing his full bunker gear. He has his Battalion Chief fire helmet on his head and his Captain helmet tucked under his arm.

Historical Notes
On 9/11, sixteen individuals were spared death because of where they happened to be located as they were evacuating. Descending Stairwell B after Flight 11 struck the North Tower were three Port Authority civilian employees, a Port Authority [olice officer, and twelve New York City firefighters including six men from Ladder 6. Spread out between floors 22 and 2 within this center-situated emergency stairwell, the Ladder 6 crew had been conducting a search-and-rescue operation around the 27th floor, when they felt and heard the vibrations of the South Tower’s collapse.

Hastening to exit down the stairwell, the Ladder 6 group soon encountered Josephine Harris, a civilian Port Authority bookkeeper in need of assistance. Slowing their own evacuation to aid Harris, the fire department rescuers managed to help Harris descend to around the 4th floor. Port Authority police officer David Lim came upon them and paused to offer his assistance. Suddenly, as feared, the North Tower shuddered and began to fail, pancaking on top of all of them with a thunderous noise and fierce winds.

In the shock and darkness that ensued, Ladder 6 Captain Jay Jonas and his men realized that others were caught with them in the stairwell; these people included Lt. Mickey Kross from FDNY Engine 16 and FDNY Chief Richard Picciotto, both of whom survived the ordeal.

Several hours later, the group of survivors were rescued. Harris, who could no longer walk, was lifted out. A shaft of light revealing an egress path enabled the rest to crawl and climb their way out. Captain Jonas was the last to exit.

Jonas, spokesperson for the Ladder 6 survivors, has credited Josephine Harris as their lucky charm. Had they not encountered her and lingered to escort her when they did, he and his men would have been crushed in the North Tower lobby or killed on the nearby street by the building’s avalanche of steel and concrete.

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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