Robert Cumins spent decades photographing Israeli prime ministers and Middle East peace accords — long before he ever pointed his camera at a plane over Manhattan
By Benyamin Cohen
Robert Cumins stood on his ninth-floor balcony in Verona, New Jersey, camera in hand, as smoke billowed from the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Then he saw a plane heading toward Lower Manhattan. He snapped two quick frames and kept watching.
Then came the fireball.
He had no idea, in that instant, that he had already taken the photograph that would define his career — that he was, in fact, photographing the last seconds of the 65 people aboard United Airlines Flight 175, en route from Boston to Los Angeles. He wouldn’t even remember the plane was in the frame until he saw the developed film an hour later. For that hour, he believed he only photographed the explosion, not the moments before.
Twenty-five years on, Cumins, now 78, still lives in that apartment. He still faces the same skyline — a skyline he has spent 25 years learning not to search for two towers that are no longer part of it.
That photograph made Cumins famous. It is one entry — the most-viewed one, certainly — in a career now entering its sixth decade, a career that has put him, again and again, at the edge of history he did not make. Read the rest at forward.com.
A history lesson in one photo.