For decades, Americans have turned to 'LIFE' to see, understand and remember the most important events of out time. And perhaps nothing sums up - so powerfully, so dramatically, so beautifully - the impact of the tragedy of September 11, 2001, better than the Ground Zero photo project undertaken by longtime 'LIFE' photographer Joe McNally.
McNally's portraits, created in a studio only blocks from Ground Zero, were taken in the days following the attacks, with a one-of-a-kind camera. Eight feet tall and twelve feet long, with a lens that was once used on a U-2 spy plane, McNally's camera forged larger-than-life Polaroid images of exceptional clarity and tone. The men women and children who arrived at McNally's studio represented a cross section of those who lived through the hellish attacks.
'Faces Of Ground Zero' is a book that will leave you in tears of sadness and of pride, a book that is to be an indelible record of that terrible day.