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Time photo editor seeks subjects of his 9/11 photograph

Patrick Witty is is requesting the public's help in his search for the subjects of an iconic photograph he took on Sept 11, 2001. (Photo courtesy Facebook/Patrick Witty)

A Time magazine photo editor is requesting the public's help in his search for the subjects of an iconic photograph he took on Sept 11, 2001.

Twelve years ago today, Patrick Witty, the International Picture Editor at Time magazine, stood near the South Tower of the World Trade Center. As the tower collapsed, he turned around and photographed the crowd outside the building as New Yorkers gaped upward in horror, he wrote in a post for Time LightBox.

The picture has been republished widely since that day, and last year Witty shared it again on Facebook, asking for anyone who recognized the subjects to contact him with the information.

[ Related: U.S. marks anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York, Washington ]

"I still do not know the names of the people in the picture, but would love to," he wrote at the time.

Today Witty wrote that he knows two of the subjects in his picture, including the man in the centre wearing the glasses, who is named Benjamin Tabile. Tabile told the photographer he was running late for a job interview in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, and he couldn't believe how narrowly he had missed being inside when it fell.

But Witty is still trying to identify the rest of the subjects in his photograph.

"I want to know them all," he wrote online at Time.