Portrait fills last vacancy on September 11 memorial photo wall

A portrait filled the last vacancy on the photo wall at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum on Wednesday, concluding the almost 16-year-long project to memorialise the hundreds killed as a result of the terrorist attacks of 2001.

Antonio Dorsey Pratt's portrait, provided through Voices Center for Resilience, an organization started after 9/11 that is dedicated to remembering the victims, was hung on the wall. Pratt was an employee of Cantor Fitzgerald Forte Food Service on the 101st floor of the north tower of the old World Trade Center.

9/11 Memorial & Museum President & CEO Alice Greenwald speaks at a portrait-hanging ceremony on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 in New York. Photo / AP

"This is a chapter in the sense that we were able to provide the last missing photograph for the exhibit," said Mary Fetchet, director of Voices Center for Resilience.

Alice Greenwald, CEO of the memorial and museum, said Pratt's photo marked the completion "of a process that began almost 16 years ago when we began work on just even imagining what the 9/11 Memorial & Museum would be and what it would contain."

Pratt's photo is blurry because "in order to focus on his beautiful face, a lot of work had to be done to zero in and enlarge and enlarge to the point where it could be appropriate for the scale of the installation," Greenwald said.

Antonio Dorsey Pratt's name is shown at 9/11 Memorial Pool. Photo / AP

The image is still recognisable despite all the enhancements, Greenwald said.

The memorial exhibition honours the 2977 people killed on September 11, 2001, by the hijacked planes that crashed in New York City, at the Pentagon and in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. It also honours the six people killed in the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993.

- AP