Pictures of the Briton Phil Penman, who was at the scene of the 9/11 terrorist attack

Fear and confusion gripped millions of New Yorkers on September 11, 2001, the day when these terrible pictures were taken. But the story behind them is even more frightening and unusual.

British Phil Penman was in his twenties, working as a news reporter and enjoying his first weekend in six months, when he heard a call that changed his whole life. I had to go to Wall Street and take pictures of the World Trade Center, which a plane had just crashed into.

He is now in his forties, and he has been living in New York for more than 20 years.

Penman cycled to the World Trade Center as fast as possible, stopping periodically to film the burning buildings. Penman was born and raised in a small, quiet village in Dorset, and although he had previously worked as a journalist in the UK and in the US, according to him, none of the photojournalists he was around that day covered anything like this.

He thought that the skyscraper would still burn, nothing special would happen and it would be time for him to return to the editorial office with the photos, so he decided to get closer, knowing that the police would probably soon cordon off the station. And then something happened that no one expected: the first tower collapsed.

Penman was able to get to the J&R music store when a cloud of dust and debris covered the city. When it happened, he was in the store with other people.

The resulting pictures of a man covered in dust, in a clean music store, surrounded by seemingly ordinary people, look unreal and scary. No less scary are the photos of rescuers on the street who provided assistance to the victims.

The sunlight on the street outside the store became noticeable only after ten minutes. And what was behind the door was a completely different world.

During these sad events, Penman and some of the heroes of his photos managed to get acquainted. A woman named Jojo contacted him through the National September 11 Memorial and Museum when she saw a photo of herself and a friend wading through the dust.

He was also approached by the daughter of the man he was filming, George Slee. 

According to Penman, what he saw that day changed his life forever.

But he would not want to forget these changes.