Photograph brings unwanted attention 

By Dave Lieber
star-telegram.com

I was watching an ABC-TV news special last week about Internet hoaxes related to the Sept. 11 attacks. The network talked about the phony e-mail warning us not to shop at malls on Halloween and the faked photograph showing a man smiling on the World Trade Center observation deck as an airplane headed toward him.

The network also showed a photograph, a now-famous image, of a likeness of a face depicted in the smoke coming from one of the burning World Trade Center towers after the attack. Many people believe that the face looks like an image of the devil.

The inference on television was that this was a hoax, too.

But I know better.

A friend of mine, Mark D. Phillips, took the photograph.

"I've had people tell me that this photo is going to be remembered like the one of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald or the flag raising at Iwo Jima," Mark told me last week. "The thing about photojournalism is it's about being in the right place at the right time. I was in the right place at the right time. But the fact that it happened in your own back yard is the hardest thing."

When the photograph is enlarged, you really can see a distinct face in the smoke - with hair, forehead, eyes, a nose, a mouth and a beard. Although I'm not sure what Satan looks like, this definitely is not the face of an angel.

"This has been the wildest experience that you can imagine," Mark said. "As a photojournalist, you always want to take that photograph that makes everybody talk. Well, this one made everybody talk. It hurt people not only on an emotional level, but also on a religious level that was completely unexpected."

On the morning of Sept. 11, Mark heard his wife, Andrea Peyser, a New York Post columnist, shout from the bedroom of their Brooklyn home that a plane had struck the World Trade Center.

Mark, who now owns an Internet company, had worked as a news photographer for more than 20 years.

"Instincts took over," he said. "I grabbed a couple of cameras and ran up to the roof. As I was opening the door to the roof, I heard the second plane hit. I stepped out and both towers were on fire. I just started taking photos."

Mark shot the famous photograph at 9:11 a.m. It was the first photo that he took with his digital camera. He took eight more digital photos, then shot photos with negative film and slide film.

He ran downstairs and e-mailed the digital photographs to the New York office of The Associated Press, for whom he had worked as a staff photographer during the Persian Gulf War. AP transmitted his photographs around the world.

At that point, he didn't know there was anything unusual about one of his shots.

"The first time I knew something was different came when my photo agent called and said, 'Did you know that there's a face in your photograph?' "

"Yeah, right," he replied.

But Mark took another look and was surprised by what he saw.

"I thought, 'Jesus, what is this?' I had no idea what to make of it."

The next day, he received 160 e-mail messages from across the nation. Most of the writers asked, "Is it real?"

By the end of the first week, he had received 2,000 e-mail messages. As of Friday, his e-mail total had climbed to 10,000.

The reaction overwhelmed him, but most disturbing was that his journalistic integrity was being questioned. People wondered whether he had doctored the photograph.

"When you've spent 20 years in an industry, you expect your peers to side with you right away," he said. "But I was guilty until proven innocent.

"The stories kept going: Web hoax, Web hoax, Web hoax. People said, 'This photo has to be doctored.' I basically had to start a public relations campaign to protect myself."

He appeared on 50 radio shows across the nation talking about the photograph. He also talked about what it felt like to be a New Yorker, with ash falling all around and panic everywhere.

"We felt like we were in a nuclear winter," he said. "I couldn't walk out of my house. I had to tell my daughter we couldn't go to the park because we couldn't breathe.

"I watched the Challenger blow up. I thought I was prepared for this. But I was sitting on my roof crying after I took these photographs."

More than a month later, his anguish has not faded.

When we spoke Friday, he told me there was a new development that brought the crisis even closer to home. It was worse than falling ash or having his integrity questioned about his photograph for the ages.

With heartbreak in his voice, Mark said, "Somebody tested positive for anthrax at the New York Post where my wife works."