Mark Phillips image with face in smoke

Mark Phillips image with face in smoke

On the morning of September 11, immediately after two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in Manhattan, retired photojournalist Mark D. Phillips took a picture that would prove to be one of the most evocative and disputed images of that tragic day. The picture, as Phillips first saw it, showed the tops of the twin towers, smoke billowing from the gaping holes left by the planes. Immediately after the photo was published, many people claimed to see a human head that had materialized from the amorphous smoke. Most insisted that the head was that of Satan's, primarily because of the "evil" nature of the attacks, and because the head seemed to have horns. Other people claimed the picture was a hoax, which, they asserted, was very possible given the availability of digital alteration software. Phillips insisted that the picture was not a hoax, and submitted the picture and documentation to prove his innocence to the StellarImages website (http://www.stellarimages.com). Since then, Phillips and StellarImages have received a large amount of email about the photograph, both favorable and unfavorable.