The horrifying New York Post subway cover: Could the photographer have rescued the victim from death?

On Tuesday, the New York Post published a disturbing cover showing a subway commuter, 58-year-old Ki Suk Han, stuck helplessly on the tracks, staring at a speeding train about to crush him. "DOOMED," blared the headline. Critics seized on the insensitive cover, condemning both the newspaper's editorial judgment and the moral compass of photographer R. Umar Abbasi, who just happened to be on the subway platform, and failed to save the man. Abbasi has now responded to his critics with a story in this morning's edition of the Post:

Abbasi insists he was too far away to help, and feared that the allegedly deranged man suspected of pushing Ki Suk Han onto the tracks — 30-year-old Naeem Davis, a homeless man — might have thrown him onto the tracks as well. "When it was all over, I didn't look at the pictures," says Abbasi. "I didn't even know at all that I had captured the images in such detail. I didn't look at them." He continues: "But I can't let the armchair critics bother me. They were not there. They have no idea how very quickly it happened."

On Today, Abbasi offered Han's loved ones his sympathies. "My condolences to the family," Abbasi told Today. "If I could have, I would have pulled Mr. Han out. I didn't care about the photographs."

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So what are we to believe? "I don't know the photographer and I wasn't there, so I'm willing to take his word that he was using the camera flash to try and warn the train's driver," Mark E. Johnson, a Pulitzer-winning photographer and lecturer at the University of Georgia, tells Gawker. "The issue is really whether the images should have been run." Abbasi argues "that he flashed the camera at the train, but in the picture there is nobody near the man," Frank Ritchin, a professor of photography at NYU, tells the Daily Beast. That suggests that Abbasi wasn't in danger from this homeless man — who is nowhere to be seen — and "could have just walked up and helped" Han.

Clearly, "the image is a kind of crucible of self-analysis," says David Carr at the New York Times: