It was a photograph so ‘try-hard arty’, so predictable, so pretentious, according to a friend, that I used to flick past it like a kid would a bunch of footy-card spares. The twin towers of the World Trade Venter, taken lying on my back as a jet airliner flew overhead: it was my second day in New York, summer 1995, and my umpteenth twin towers shot. My travel partner Chris, a Minnesotan I had worked with in Prague, could take it no more. ‘Ooh, gee, wow!’ he moaned in his best mocking Homer Simpson voice. ‘Plane between buildings. Ooh, Mr Arty. Aren’t you done yet? Honestly, man, you’re giving me the shits!’

Chris had a right to feel this way. For two hours he’d watched his normally calm, rational friend run about like a man possessed, snapping the towers from every vantage point, through every conceivable prop, his sunglasses included. Chris thought it quirky at first, offering a playful ‘crazy bastard’ while I lay beside puddles, in laneways, or stopped passers-by for what he called the ‘busy strangers rudely interrupted for portrait before towers series’. But the novelty wore off as Manhattan’s cauldron hit 102 ̊F on the mercury, 200 ̊F on the soles of your feet. ‘Just one more, mate, I promise,’ I’d say, always avoiding eye contact. ‘Oh, oh, hang on, just one more.’ The plane pic was the final straw. ‘You’re a selfish fucker, man,’ Chris snapped. ‘This twin towers thing you’ve got going’s full of shit,’ and off he stormed, arms and legs chugging like a steam engine, smoke pouring from his ears. ‘Pissed-off friend power-walking away past north tower’ made a great snap.