The extraordinary story of the 9/11 photograph and the man looking at the camera

The story behind a mysterious wedding photograph found in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in New York was finally resolved last week when Elizabeth Stringer Keefe managed to track down those in the shot.

The Independent'sSimon Usborne spoke to Keefe, and the man looking directly at camera in the striking photograph, to find out more about this extraordinary story.

After being given the photo by a friend who lived in New York, Keefe would try, in vain, on each anniversary of the attacks to find out who it belonged to - scouring victims’ websites, sending emails and making phone calls - but nothing. Until this year.

After posting a plea on Twitter, the image went viral around the world and finally, a man called Fred Mahe sent her an email with the words:

I know the people in the photo. Call me.

Not only did Mahe know the people in the photograph, he was in it. Moreover, everyone in the picture was alive and well.

Mahe, who lived and worked in Manhattan at the time of the attacks, had pinned the picture on the wall beside his desk, alongside other snaps of family and friends.

The wedding had taken place in March 2001, in Aspen, the Colorado ski resort.

I put it on my wall there in my office, because I thought it was such a great photo of everyone.

When United Airlines Flight 175 hit Mahe’s tower, directly above his office, he was still on his way to work. He emerged from the subway station soon after 9am, and would spend the following two days at Ground Zero.

Shocked and grieving for an unknown number of colleagues (he would later learn his company, Baseline Financial Services, had lost four employees), Mahe was not thinking about the things that he had left at his desk.

Months later I got a call from City Hall to come and collect a paycheck stub that was half-burned and a frequent flyer card, but otherwise I didn’t think about it, and I didn’t think about the photo.

Then, 13 years later, there it was, having survived the flurry of paper and debris blasted out of his building, and now being shared by millions of people around the world.

I never would have thought it. 9/11 changed me. I saw the worst of humanity, the gates of hell open. But on 9/12, as I call it, we saw the best of humanity.

And that’s the coolest part of this story, that Elizabeth has persisted for 13 years to try and get this photo back to the people in it, to find out if they were dead or alive and get some sort of closure.

As this weekend rolled on, Mahe, who is now married and has two young children, spoke to Keefe several more times, developing the bond he never knew they shared.

They talked about spending Thanksgiving together and on Sunday night they returned to New York City to meet, after a news network invited them to appear on its Monday morning TV show.

They have now decided that the photo belongs in New York, in the 9/11 museum.

It’s a symbol of such community perseverance and that message is so aligned with 9/11, and 9/12, that it feels right to leave it here as a symbol of strength and hope that endures way beyond this event.

• Elizabeth Stringer Keefe

More: After 13 years, an answer to a 9/11 wedding photo mystery

More: The wedding photo from Ground Zero: A shot in the dark