Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Satan in the Smoke" Emails Description An account of the resource On the morning of September 11, immediately after two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in Manhattan, photojournalist Mark D. Phillips took a picture that would prove to be one of the most evocative and disputed images of that tragic day. Many peple later construed the image of the smoke in his photo of the burning buildings to compose the face of Satan. These e-mails related to this picture provide a revealing portal into Americans' responses to the attacks in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. September 11 Email September 11 Email: Body The basic content, as unstructured text; sometimes containing a signature block at the end. Dear Mark, First, thanks for being on the scene and taking excellent photographs. It was a horrible attack, and the fact that guys (and gals) like you were there to document it is very important. That's what journalism is all about. Second, the concept of you being at fault for capturing a startling image is as stupid as blaming JPL for catching images on Mars that some people thought looked like a face. We are all free to interpret photographs as we like. You took many photographs of the tragic attack. Many papers chose to run your photos. The tragedy you shot *was* evil -- devil faces won't make it more or less evil. I can't believe people would complain to *you* because one of your pictures, of terrible smoke and fire pouring from the WTC, captured an anthropomorphic cloud of smoke. We are in a profession of few actual reporters and many "media critics." They all need to get out there and do a real job, and quit hassling people who do actually work. (Yeah, I'm guilty. I haven't been a beat reporter for five years, but I am planning to return immediately. We have a crucial story to cover.) I saw your picture in the Philly paper last week. It creeped me out, made me think of Carl Jung, the famed European psychologist. He's the guy who studied archetypes ... these sort of mass visions related to evolution and whatnot. Never really believed any of it (slept through the college classes), but seeing your picture reminded me of all those failed classes. Anyway, my very good friend Jim Lowney heads the news-photo desk at Getty Images in lower Manhattan, and he says your pictures are terrific. Ignore the morons and keep doing good work. Cheers, Ken ------------------------------------------------------------ Ken Layne ~ http://kenlayne.com layne@tabloid.net Columnist, Online Journalism Review: http://ojr.org http://ojr.usc.edu/content/sectionfront.cfm?request=12 Los Angeles, Calif. September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. Fri, 21 Sep 2001 02:23:30 -0700 September 11 Email: To The email addresses, and optionally names of the message's recipients MPHILLIPS@stellarimages.com September 11 Email: From The email address, and optionally the name of the author. Ken Layne <layne@tabloid.net> September 11 Email: CC The email addresses of those who received the message addressed primarily to another. September 11 Email: Subject A brief summary of the topic of the message. 911DA Item Elements describing a September 11 Digital Archive item. Status The process status of this item. approved Consent Whether September 11 Digital Archive has permission to possess this item. full Posting Whether the contributor gave permission to post this item. yes Copyright Whether the contributor holds copyright to this item. yes Source The source of this item. born-digital Media Type The media type of this item. email Created by Author Whether the author created this item. yes Described by Author Whether the description of this item was submitted by the author. no Date Entered The date this item was entered into the archive. 2001-09-21