The Devil's Face in the Smoke

[naomi_jay]

 *This may be a sensitive subject, given the timing. I don't want to offend or upset anyone, so be warned*

On September 11 2001, just after the second aircraft hit the World Trade Centre, photographer Mark D Phillips took this photo:



It appears to show a demonic face rising from the smoke. The photo is almost certainly genuine, with no apparent doctoring having taken place - it was transmitted within 40 minutes of having been taken. There have been many sad, defining pictures taken of this tragic event, but this one seems to have captured people's imagination more than most.

Personally I find the image to be particularly haunting. 9/11 was a day that reshaped global relationships and politics. It's a day that I will always remember. I know where I was, who I was with and what I was doing when I heard the news and I think this photo captures the feeling we probably all had on that day.

So what do you make of it? Is the image genuine? If so, what does it mean? Or is it just a coincidence, given deeper import by the situation? We live in a culture where Jesus and Mother Theresa regularly make appearances in oil spills - is this any different?

Comments

[six-old-cars.livejournal.com]

The severe triangular shape of the so-called "face" suggests the result of air currents and localised chemical differences in the contents of the rooms in the WTC. The "facial features" could be caused by transitory smoke layers from bursts of new combustion. These are all common things in fires, and it's only the coincidence of them that produces a pattern which the human brain interprets as being a face. The image in this form probably only lasted a fraction of a second, and had the photographer not caught it just at that moment we'd probably never have heard of it.

As quite possibly the only person likely to reply who actually really believes in God and the devil, I'm still of the opinion that there's nothing deeper to this so-called face than yet another demonstration of the power of human imagination.

[chaostheory.livejournal.com]

Its not a shopped image, definately not, but the human brain is programmed to recognise human faces and features. It's like patterns in carpets or wallpaper.

Still, its pretty scary stuff.

[pervertatoid.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

[dracschick.livejournal.com]

I would just say it's a coincidence.

[leatherzebra.livejournal.com]

I try not to swing one way or the other because truth be told it's too big of a subject. Not in patriotism and in the solemn feelings t hat stories like that still invoke. Truth is NO ONE is neutral on the topic of 9/11. Everyone has a theory, or hates certain politicians who use it to further their plan, or still feels a pang of terror or loss or vulnerability.

So everyone wants to see something in it. And that's the first problem in neutrality.

9/11 is so incredibly complicated because while we feel we are victims, and the people killed are innocent victims of hate the people who did it believed they were more than correct in doing so. To them it was no different than a small band of heroes trying to even the odds and take on an evil over lord. There is always another side of the story, and this just proves it. There is more to their feelings of justification than an extreme section of religion. Just as our lives and our convictions are the result of a lifetime of information and events so are theirs. They have a reason for believing what they do. And seeing people like that as pure evil hatred and nothing more is close minded and dangerous, because you have to understand to protect yourself against it.

Which makes me think if there was a devil there it wasn't on one side or another, it was there to enjoy the crash.