Dust Lady’s death stirs debate on muddied morals of news images

Backlit by a yellow hue, the picture had an air of infinity to it, as if the Dust Lady were one of the lava shapes in Pompeii, writes Terry Prone

THE Briefcase Man. The Dust Lady. Each was captured by press photographers in the direct aftermath of the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11.

Because we hovered over every photograph coming out of Manhattan in those days, we almost came to regard the two of them as personal acquaintances. They loomed out of a landscape made cinder-snowy by burned office papers floating, lighter than air, ploughing through inch-deep ash silencing their steps.