Do you remember what you were doing exactly 25 years ago?

I was nine years old, sitting in English class. There was no internet in our pockets, no smartphones, no social media, and no way for news to travel around the world within seconds like it does today. There was only a chalkboard and a clock in front of us, marking 9:46 a.m. in Brasilia, when the first tower was hit. The world had already changed, but we had no idea yet.

I remember someone walking into the classroom and asking my English teacher, Ms. Carol to step outside, I just remember that she came back differently. Shortly after that we went to recess, where I vaguely remember a television near the cafeteria, with people gathered around it watching the news. I was still too young and too far removed from what was happening to understand the magnitude of it. At nine years old, the images on that screen felt almost impossible to comprehend. Almost like a movie someone had produced.

School ended early that day, maybe because it was an international school, with Americans and Diplomats kids attending. Police were outside the school assisting with the early exit of all students, and on the drive home, passing the embassies, I remember seeing police everywhere. Why? That's a question I would only understand later.

As time passed, the reality became clearer. History had changed that day. 

As my interest in journalism, history, and especially photojournalism(audio-visual) grew, so did my fascination with New York City, and 9/11 came not only with the city but with the World’s history. I kept coming across photographs, documentaries, films and stories about 9/11 — a story geographically far from me, yet impossible not to feel connected to. 

I first visited New York in 2010. With only two days in the city, the excitement of Times Square, Broadway, Central Park and the sparks of 5th ave left little room to think about making my way downtown.

In 2023, I returned to New York and visited the Memorial for the first time. After years of watching the news footage, documentaries, movies, and hearing stories from people who were there, I remember approaching Ground Zero and thinking about that day, 9/11/2001.

The noise. The movement. The confusion. The phone calls. The families. The first responders. The New Yorkers. 

And the millions of people around the world who watched history unfold from a distance, trying to understand what they were seeing.

In 2024, I visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum for the first time. It took me several visits to New York before I felt ready to walk through those doors. Words don't really describe what it feels like to visit that museum. Not simply because it is sad or moving, but because it is real. Too real. It wasn’t just like any museum around the world, it was a museum of something that had happened right there. 

As I walked through the exhibits, read the stories, looked at the photographs, listened to the recordings, and saw the objects recovered from that day: I remembered.

Despite being only nine years old, I remembered where I was. I remembered the television. I remembered my teacher being called outside the classroom. I remembered the police on the streets of Brasília close to the embassies. I remembered seeing something on television that I couldn't understand at the time.

For someone who has always had an unusually strong memory, it was surreal to walk through a place documenting an event I had experienced from thousands of miles away as a child.

It felt like I was finally seeing, in person, the reality behind the images I had watched on television for the past 25 years.

Last year, I was in New York on 9/11. And I came to a realization: history wasn't simply "made" in 2001. History is made every single year.

Every September 11, people remember. Families continue to remember those they lost. Survivors continue to live with what happened. First responders and countless others continue to carry the consequences. New Yorkers remember. Americans remember. And people around the world remember.

These are some of the photographs I've taken during my visits to NYC.

For me, they are more than photographs of a place. They are photographs of memory and history. Photographs of a day I was too young to understand when it first happened.