"It's a crime scene. No photographs allowed."
And I asked her, "What would happen if I was a member
of the press?" And she told me,
"Oh, look back there," and back a block was the press corps
tied up in a little penned-in area,
and I said, "Well, when do they go in?"
and she said, "Probably never."
And as I walked away from that, I had this crystallization,
probably from the blow, because it was an insult in a way.
I thought, "Oh, if there's no pictures,
then there'll be no record. We need a record."
And I thought, "I'm gonna make that record.
I'll find a way to get in, because I don't want to
see this history disappear."
JB: He did. He pulled in every favor he could,
and got a pass into the World Trade Center site,
where he photographed for nine months almost every day.
Looking at these photographs today brings back
the smell of smoke that lingered on my clothes
when I went home to my family at night.
My office was just a few blocks away.