Bill Biggart Was on Site to Document the Terror of 9/11. Only His Cameras Made It Home

Bill Biggart was a photographer who spent his life running toward danger with a camera. On September 11, 2001, he heard that a plane had hit the World Trade Center and immediately grabbed three cameras and headed downtown. He was the only photographer killed when the Twin Towers fell that day. His cameras were recovered weeks later, and the photos inside told the story of his final hours.

Biggart grew up in a big family with 12 children. When he was five, a fire destroyed his family's home and killed two of his younger brothers. That loss never left him, and it helped shape the kind of person — and photographer — he would become.

As a teenager, Biggart quit high school and started taking pictures. He moved to San Francisco and later returned to New York City, where he photographed people who were poor, mistreated, or left out. He believed it was his job to show the world what was happening to people who didn't have a voice.

He was also a single father. His first wife left when their son William was very young, and Biggart raised the boy on his own in Manhattan. He treated William less like a child and more like a small partner, bringing him along to work and staying up late playing pool.

Biggart later built a family with Wendy Doremus, and together they had two more children — Kate and Peter. They lived in a big loft apartment in the Flatiron neighborhood. Biggart kept a darkroom there, grew plants on the rooftop, and loved exploring every street in the city.

He traveled to some of the most dangerous places in the world to take pictures. He covered conflicts in Israel, the West Bank, and Northern Ireland. He even flew to Berlin in 1989, just after a root canal, to photograph the fall of the Berlin Wall.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Biggart and Doremus were walking their dogs when a taxi driver told them a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Biggart went back to the loft, grabbed his cameras, and headed downtown on foot. Doremus thought it was just another news story — not something truly dangerous.

Biggart photographed everything as he moved toward the towers. He captured fire trucks rushing to the scene, survivors covered in ash, and the South Tower as it collapsed. He even called Doremus from close to the towers, telling her, 'I'm safe, I'm with the firemen.' She was not comforted.

His last photograph was taken at 10:28 in the morning. It showed the ruins of the South Tower and the North Tower still standing — but moments later, the North Tower fell. A police officer who survived later told William that his father had been looking up to take a photo when the tower started to come down. The officer escaped through a door. Biggart did not.

Three weeks after 9/11, Biggart's cameras were returned to Doremus in two black trash bags. Friends helped her unpack them at his studio. One camera's memory card was recovered, and after some effort, it revealed three folders of images showing the horror of that morning.

The family waited for news and hoped for the best. Peter, who was only 14, told himself his father might be injured somewhere. But on September 15th, searchers found Biggart's body near several fallen firefighters. Doremus gathered the children and told them their father was gone.

Biggart had been the center of the family, the person who kept everyone together. Without him, important moments — like Peter's college graduation — became reminders of his absence. 'He was the gravity that held everything together,' Peter said.

Today, William lives in Seattle and is still working on a tattoo that covers his entire back. It shows the Archangel Michael rising above a burning city, with his father's name written across his shoulder blades. William says the angel carries fallen heroes to heaven — a fitting symbol for his dad.

Biggart's 9/11 photos have never been sold by his family. His cameras, once displayed at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., are now back with Doremus as she searches for a permanent home for them. For the 25th anniversary of the attacks, the Imperial War Museum in London showed Biggart's final photos for the first time outside the United States.

William says his father would not be shocked by how much injustice and conflict still exists in the world. But he also wants people to remember that his dad was more than his last photographs. 'Photographers aren't heroes,' William says. 'They capture people doing heroic things.'