The New York Public Library announced the acquisition of the CameraPlanet Archive, a collection of more than 1,200 hours of contemporaneous video documenting the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and their aftermath, including roughly 500 hours of footage that has never been publicly released.
Library officials unveiled the donation on the 24th anniversary of the attacks and said the moving-image material — shot largely on handheld cameras before the rise of smartphones — preserves first-person, timestamped records of the events and recovery efforts. The library said the full archive will not be made available to the general public until 2027.
The newly disclosed footage includes striking images of Ground Zero recovery operations, damaged subway tunnels, animal rescue missions and other scenes from the city in the days after the attacks. Excerpts released to The Post under the title "Nighttime Recovery" show smoke rising over the World Trade Center site while first responders and heavy equipment sift through rubble; other clips depict work to repair a blasted-out subway tunnel near the Cortland Street station and a bomb scare at the Empire State Building on Sept. 12, 2002, according to the library's announcement.
Brent Reidy, director of Research Libraries at the New York Public Library, said the archive will help ensure that future generations can study Sept. 11 as it was experienced by New Yorkers in real time. "By preserving these firsthand accounts, we are ensuring that future generations can study Sept. 11 as it was experienced by New Yorkers in real time," Reidy said.
The CameraPlanet Archive was donated by filmmakers Steven Rosenbaum and Pamela Yoder. Rosenbaum, an Emmy Award–winning filmmaker, called the collection the largest contemporaneous video record of the attacks. He said timestamped video carries civic importance amid what he described as an environment of misinformation and revisionist histories. "The CameraPlanet Archive is not simply a record of tragedy; it is a safeguard against forgetting and distortion," Rosenbaum said.
Library officials said the material was captured by professional and amateur videographers working on the ground in the hours and days after the attacks. The footage provides visual documentation of emergency-response work, scenes of structural damage and other aspects of the recovery that have been little seen in public presentations of the events.
To mark the donation, the New York Public Library will screen Rosenbaum's film "7 Days in September" on Sept. 11, 2025, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The screening is part of a series of events the library said will accompany its stewardship of the archive and efforts to make portions of it available for research and exhibition.
Archivists and scholars stressed the value of contemporaneous records for historical study. The library said it will undertake preservation and cataloging work before broader public release and will collaborate with researchers to determine access protocols that balance preservation needs, donor restrictions and sensitivities surrounding the subject matter.
The donation adds to a range of institutional efforts to preserve primary-source material from Sept. 11 for future scholarship. Officials emphasized that contemporaneous moving images — with dates and times embedded in the original recordings — offer a form of documentation that complements photographs, oral histories and written records, and that careful stewardship will be necessary to make the material available for research and education while respecting the events and people depicted.