History isn't just about dates. It’s about images that burn into the back of your retinas and stay there for decades. When we talk about the man jumping from twin towers, most people are actually thinking of one specific photograph. It’s "The Falling Man." Taken by Richard Drew at 9:41:15 a.m. on September 11, 2001, it captures a moment of impossible grace in the middle of absolute hell.
The image is haunting.
He’s perfectly vertical. He’s upside down. He looks almost relaxed, like he’s diving into a swimming pool on a Saturday afternoon rather than plummeting from the North Tower of the World Trade Center. But he wasn't relaxed. He was escaping.
The Search for an Identity
For years, people tried to figure out who he was. Honestly, it became a bit of an obsession for journalists like Peter Cheney and later Henry Singer, who directed a documentary about the whole thing. Initially, everyone thought it was Norberto Hernandez. He was a pastry chef at Windows on the World. His family even looked at the photo and, at first, thought they recognized his clothes.
But grief is messy.
Later, his family looked closer and realized it wasn't him. The shoes were wrong. The clothes didn't match what he wore to work that morning. It’s hard to imagine the pain of scanning a photo of a man falling to his death just to see if it’s your father. Eventually, the search shifted toward Jonathan Briley. He was a 43-year-old sound engineer who also worked at the top of the North Tower. His brother, Timothy, actually recognized his boots. Jonathan had asthma. He’d often wear an orange undershirt that would show beneath his uniform. In some of the other frames Richard Drew took that day—because there were twelve in total—you can see an orange shirt fluttering under the white tunic.
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We can't say for 100% certain it was him. The medical examiner’s office never officially identified the jumpers by name because their bodies were often unrecoverable or indistinguishable from other victims. But for the Briley family, the evidence was enough to find a weird kind of peace.
Why the Media Stopped Showing the Man Jumping From Twin Towers
If you remember that day, you remember the live feeds. But you might also remember how quickly those images disappeared. There was this immediate, massive backlash. People called it "snuff photography." They said it was exploitative. On September 12, The New York Times ran Drew’s photo on page seven. The paper received thousands of complaints.
It felt too private. It felt like watching someone’s most vulnerable, final choice without their permission.
So, the media self-censored. For years, the "jumpers" became a taboo subject. We talked about the heroes, the firefighters, and the structural integrity of the steel, but we didn't talk about the hundreds of people—estimated between 50 and 200—who were forced out of those windows by smoke and heat that reached over 1,000 degrees.
Forced Choice or Free Will?
Here is the thing about the phrase "jumpers." The 9/11 victims' families almost universally hate it. To them, "jumping" implies a choice, perhaps even suicide. But the Chief Medical Examiner's office in New York made it very clear: these people did not commit suicide.
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They were murdered.
Basically, the environment inside the towers became unsurvivable. If you're standing in a room where the air is replaced by jet-fuel-fed fire and thick, black smoke that sears your lungs, you aren't "choosing" to jump. You're choosing how to spend your last ten seconds. You're choosing the air over the fire.
The physics of it are brutal. From the upper floors, it took about ten seconds to hit the ground. They reached terminal velocity—roughly 120 to 150 miles per hour. There was no surviving that.
The Cultural Impact of the Falling Man
Why do we still look at this? Why is the man jumping from twin towers still a top search term twenty-five years later? It’s because it represents the individual caught in the gears of global tragedy. We can't wrap our heads around 2,977 deaths. It’s just a number. But we can look at one man in a white tunic and black pants and feel his specific, solitary moment.
Don DeLillo wrote a whole novel called Falling Man based on the image. It’s become a symbol of the "leap of faith," even if that faith was just for a breath of fresh air.
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Technical Details of the Photograph
Richard Drew wasn't looking for a "money shot." He was a veteran AP photographer. He’d seen Robert Kennedy assassinated. He knew how to keep his finger on the shutter when everyone else was looking away. He was using a Nikon DCS 620.
- Shutter Speed: 1/500th of a second.
- Aperture: f/8.
- Lens: 300mm telephoto.
Because of that high shutter speed, the man is frozen. In the other eleven frames, he’s tumbling. He’s limbs-out, chaotic, and messy. But in that one frame—the one that went global—his body aligns perfectly with the vertical lines of the towers. It creates a surreal, geometric harmony that makes the horror even more jarring.
Acknowledging the Limitations of Memory
We have to be careful with how we categorize these events. Some people claim they saw "hundreds" falling at once. Forensic evidence and video analysis suggest it was more sporadic. It’s also important to note that many people didn't "jump" so much as they were pushed by the crush of people behind them trying to get to a window, or they simply lost their footing while trying to lean out for oxygen.
There’s a lot we will never know. We won't know the last thoughts of the man in the photo. We won't know if he was Jonathan Briley or someone else entirely who just happened to look like him from a distance.
How to Approach This History Today
If you’re researching the man jumping from twin towers, don’t just look at the photo as a piece of "disaster porn." It’s a historical record of a human being in an impossible situation.
- Read the full accounts: Look into the work of Junod, who wrote the original Esquire piece "The Falling Man" in 2003. It’s arguably the best long-form journalism ever written on the subject.
- Visit the Memorial: If you go to the 9/11 Memorial in NYC, you’ll notice the names are grouped by "meaningful adjacencies." Many of those who were in the North Tower’s upper floors are listed together.
- Respect the terminology: Use the term "fallers" rather than "jumpers" when speaking with historians or survivors' families. It acknowledges the lack of agency they had in that moment.
- Support Mental Health: If viewing these images causes distress—which is a normal human reaction—reach out to organizations like the National September 11 Memorial & Museum for educational resources that provide context rather than just trauma.
The story of the falling man isn't about death. It’s about the fact that he existed. He had a job, a family, a favorite pair of boots, and an orange shirt. He was a person before he was a pixelated figure in a newspaper. That’s the part we can’t afford to forget.