Racing through the streets of Tribeca just after 8:47am the morning of September 11th I had no clue of what I was about to experience. I only knew that I was chasing the source of the loudest most horrible sound I’ve ever heard in my life. Within the minutes of my arrival to the corner of Vesey and Church Street, just below Five World Trade, the tragic events o Sept 11th had begun to unfold for the whole world to see. I have never chased tragedy with m cameras. I have only looked for the truth in the world, to see and understand mankind in its most fragile and heroic states.

My journey to the base of the World Trade Centre began in the spring of 1999 when I left New York and my career in advertising behind to explore the globe as a documentary photographer for a year. I travelled from Tokyo to Cape Town to Oslo to Amsterdam to Hong Kong, Xian, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Windhoek, Bangkok, Beijing, Rome, Saigon, Kyoto, Singapore and many places in between.

I had just flown home to New York from Tanzania a few days before the 11th of September. Since late 1999 I had been dating a Norwegian journalist. Her and I had been commuting between Europe and the United States for the previous two years to see each other. Now, I had just spent the month of August in Tanzania helping her set up a life in Dar es Salaam, as she had just taken a job as the African correspondent for a News Agency.

Knowing her expertise in Islam, I was worried about her taking a position in a city that had seen radical Islamic terrorism up close only few years earlier, when the American Embassy was bombed. Our time together went from experiencing clashes between Christians and Muslims, to police corruption, to watching the sunrise over the African plains from inside of a Baobab Treehouse. I wanted to stay longer in Africa, but I had responsibilities back in New York. I was in the middle of putting an advertising campaign together for an account at Young & Rubicam, which was one of my biggest clients.

A pit hung in my stomach the whole flight back to the United States, as I was leaving so much I loved behind. My only rationale for leaving my girlfriend behind was that “I still had something important to do in New York.” She said that my perspective and photo skills were more needed in Africa. She urged me to stay and give up advertising to shoot for AP or Reuters. “Soon” was all I could say.

Back in New York, I was up early each morning battling jetlag. On the morning of the 11th I was writing an e-mail from my home office to a friend about my experiences in Tanzania. I was detailing what it was like being caught in the middle of a street riot between the police and religious groups and having to drive my friends through a storm of tear gas and burning vehicles. As I was typing out this experience I was knocked to attention by the unbelievable sound of a plane crashing in my neighbourhood. How I reacted from that moment on was all pure instinct.

My camera bag from Africa remained unpacked at the front door of my apartment. I grabbed it and within seconds I was sprinting through the awakening streets of Tribeca, chasing the source of the most horrible sound I have ever heard in my life. Humanity has no vocabulary for what was happening that morning. Only a handful of extremely determined people knew the script that day. The rest of the world experienced the shocking events together moment by moment from each of our own vantage points. My vantage point happened to be right at the corner of the World Trade Centre complex.

What seemed like forever happened so fast. Gorill, my girlfriend whom I had just left behind in Africa, was at a neighbours home in Dar es Salaam watching the live newsfeed of the second plane hitting the South Tower. The reality of the event hung in her stomach. She knew me well enough in her heart to realize where I would be with my cameras at that moment. When the Towers collapsed she thought I was dead. For days Gorill, like most of my loved ones around the world waited for the phone to ring, an e-mail… anything to know I was safe. Because of the destruction I lost all communication from my home and office. Finally on September 13th, news spread that I had captured the image that made the cover of TIME magazine, this helped many of the people close to me figure out that I was safe.

I’m lucky to be alive. I did what I could that day, and am fortunate that I have pictures to describe what words cannot. In all honesty, to find the wisdom to explain and interpret the devastation of this act of violence is beyond language. On the 15th of September my Mom and Dad finally reached me on my cell phone from London where they were vacationing. My Dad told me that he would never have asked me to do what I did that day, but he was grateful knowing that his son froze a moment in time for the rest of the world to understand and put a face on the magnitude and absolute evil behind this act of terrorism.

This singular experience has changed my life. I will never forget that day. How blue the sky was. The plume of dark smoke clawing its way above the skyline. The flocks of birds that flew around overhead not knowing where to land. And how very, very quiet the city had become. The way I experience New York and Africa are now the same, both places exist at the crossroads of both absolute beauty and crushing tragedy. In Africa I learned the meaning of compassion, in New York I learned how it was used.