Five years on

9/11 is one of those moments that gets seared into your brain, like my parents' generation where were you when Kennedy was shot?. I remember standing in the lower sixth common room at school, waiting for the inevitable afternoon bell to ring when suddenly the song playing on capital was interrupted with a news flash, although information was still vague and over the screeches of my class mates, I could barely make out the words before the bell rang and the radio was switched off for afternoon registration.

Rushing out to my car at the end of school, I listened to news reports the entire way home and when I finally barrelled through my front door, the TV was already skipping between Sky News and CNN. And for two days, it remained that way, all other programmes forgotten as the same horrific images were looped over and over in front of our eyes.

But unlike the desensitisation that we feel to most images of violence, five years on, the horror of those photographs still remains as vivid as the day they were taken. But the pictures that take a back seat, that are often forgotten, are those of who died that day. The image at the top of this post is of a wall inside the Tribute WTC visitors centre in New York. We are often too focused on the mechanical horrors to focus on the innocent lives lost that day and the faces that went with them.