The Falling Man of  9/11 remains the most poignant image taken during that horrific September morning. An attack which killed around 3,000 people, it changed and in many ways defined the world we live in today. Amongst the confusion of lower Manhattan, this image depicts a man in mid-fall from one of the world tallest buildings. 

Yet below the apparent distress this image invokes, is a deeper calming sense of the inevitable. Arms spread wide, the man appears innocently angelic as he plunges through the New York skyline. In his last moments of life, he is a solitary being in the vast openness of air that surrounds him. We are born in a womb of solitude, and now the cycle completes with the solitudal death in free fall. It is the viewers realization of this which creates the melancholic compassion for the helplessness of the man. 

Can the Falling Man represent a greater event? That of the fallen ideals of American capitalism, in a world which no longer values the importance of the individual? Or the "waxen wings" of an America who has outlived its very goals which created such economic and political success? 

Ten years on, the impact of the attacks remains elusive, yet if anything can come of such inhumane evil, it is an opportunity of reflection, for both the families and the country as a whole.