Forman was already an accomplished photographer. The previous year, he had followed a firetruck to the scene of a fire in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood. He instinctively ran to the back of the building, where he saw a fireman climbing down from the roof onto a fifth-floor fire escape to rescue a 19-year-old girl and her 2-year-old goddaughter. As a firetruck extended its ladder toward the girls and their would-be rescuer, the fire escape collapsed. The firefighter pulled himself to safety, but the woman and child plunged to the ground. Forman kept shooting, then looked away. Still shaking, he developed his pictures and found this chilling shot of woman and child in free fall. (Forman would learn later that the woman had died but the child had survived.) The photograph would lead to stricter fire escape regulations, and it would win Forman the first of his two consecutive Pulitzers.