The non-philosophical stimulus chosen is the somewhat infamous image of The Falling Man. Taken on the morning of September 11, 2001 following the terrorist attacks on the United States, The Falling Man captures the falling headfirst of one of the trapped individuals at the top of the World Trade Center after choosing to do so, rather than wait to be burned alive. from the flames, he takes his own life by throwing himself from the top of one of the towers. Similar actions were taken by at least two hundred other people. After seeing the photograph, nothing else to date has so clearly reminded me of the concept that Jean-Paul Sartre calls "Radical Freedom." The captured action is the epitome of man's ability to exercise his free will and calls into question other existentialist concepts. Man's fear and despair. Man's desperation in the face of abandonment. The anguish we feel when we realize that we are solely responsible for ourselves and our actions. All these concepts are raised by the stimulus, by the expression of freedom conveyed by the choice of the falling man, and we will examine to what extent it is right to define photography as a visual encapsulation of existentialist thought. “Man is condemned to be free ; because once he is born he is responsible for everything he does." The stimulus showcases not only the freedom attributed to man, with this quote from Sartre's Being and Nothingness, but also exemplifies how this freedom can be considered a condemnation. The choice, the ability to take one's own life is somewhat paradoxically the maximum expression of freedom, but nevertheless the only way to unsubscribe from this freedom. Regardless of the motivations, which will be examined later, it cannot be denied how... middle of paper... to appeal to, man must make his way. Sometimes this involves exercising radical freedom in ways that Kierkegaard might call “absurd,” but ultimately it all comes back to this notion: “Man is condemned to be free.” The only slightly problematic issue that remains to be resolved is that suicide is an act of freedom that leads to the removal of our freedom; the one thing Sartre claims we are not free to do. While ideologically this is perhaps problematic, in reality it is simply one manifestation of an action that tends towards the absurd. The Falling Man powerfully demonstrates a real-life manifestation of some major existentialist ideals and serves to convincingly exemplify them. Works Cited www.wikipedia.org Fromm, Erich, Remarks on The Problem of Free Association, Tübingen: 1955 Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness, tr. H. Barnes, London: 1958