Flag At Ground Zero

The Picture that United Us All
Raising the Flag at Ground Zero is a photograph by Thomas E. Franklin. The photo depicts three firefighters raising an American flag while being surrounded by the rubble of the former World Trade Center in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks that took place in 2001. This picture captured the attention of the American media, and became synonymous with uniting the American public and creating a feeling of hope on one of the most tragic days in American history. Thomas E. Franklin later went on to earn a Pulitzer Prize nomination for his photographs from the September 11th attacks. Throughout the duration of this essay I will analyze and critique this photograph using six different perspectives
Franklin the photographer of Raising the Flag at Ground Zero described the process of how he took the photograph in an interview with Jeannie Clegg in the September 13th 2001 edition of The Record. In the interview he stated "I would I say was 150 yards away when I saw the firefighters raising the flag. They were standing on a structure about 20 feet above the ground. This was a long lens picture: there was about 100 yards between the foreground and background, and the long lens would capture the enormity of the rubble behind them” (Clegg, 2001). This quote confirms that Franklin had to use either a zoom focus lens or a telephoto lens to take this photograph. Later within the same interview with The Record Franklin also described his vertical positioning in relation to the subjects in the photo. In the interview he says "I made the picture standing underneath what may have been one of the elevated walkways, possibly the one that had connected the World Trade plaza and the World Financial Center” (Clegg, 2001). This quote describes Franklin’s exact position when taking this photograph. Both of these quotes work together in order to inform the reader of exactly how much work went into this specific
However after researching the photograph further I feel that this decision was caused by the photographer’s personal vision for the photograph. I also feel that the photographer's location in relation to the subjects could have contributed to this artistic decision as well. The picture is a pure action shot that was taken while the subjects were in the middle of moving and lifting an object. This gives the picture an added layer of both movement and weight. During the process of writing this paper, I learned many different things about this photo; such as the names of the firefighters in the photograph, where the flag in the photograph came from, and the process of how the photographer took the