Photography was a grand profession within a grand industry known as journalism. We became known as photojournalists because those of us who strive to tell the whole story in a photograph also became front line reporters, some just sharing with writers what we saw that led up to our photographs, while others became what is now known as content producers, doing the writing ourselves.

Satan in the Smoke stories in newspapers and magazines

I learned from great writers, editors and photographers that our job was to report the news. We were not meant to be a part of the story, our job was to remain impartial. Yes, there were many times that indignation and horror took over my soul as I watched through my viewfinder. My job was to record what I saw, not what I thought. From 1978 to 2001, I worked my way to the heights of journalism only to see it all come crashing down because of one image I took during the darkest moment in my career.

On 9/11, I did nothing different from what I’ve done 1 million times before. I raised my camera and I took a picture of what I saw. The picture became about what I didn’t see and whether taking a photograph with a digital camera was real. My entire career led to that moment.

The reason I became a photographer was because we were chroniclers of history. I was taught from the start that photographs did not lie, but they can and they do, especially in the digital age that I helped bring into being. Each person has their own perception and images, just like words can be twisted into any narrative. This picture suffered that fate.

I received thousands of emails about the photograph, being told many times that I was “put on the planet to take this photograph.” I also was told by my peers that I created the photograph “digitally” to put forward my own religious and Islamaphobic views. For over twenty years, this has troubled me, and cut me off from a career I loved. Now nearly 25 years later, I can remind everybody that it was radical Islamic Muslims, who perpetrated the worst attack on American soil. I am not Islamphobic, but I have become a Zionist.

And I have also come to the realization that I am meant to champion this image and what it represents…. HATRED. If it really is “the devil” showing his face during the death of the perpetrators of the World Trade Center attack, then I was put on the planet to be sure that this image was sent to the world. Why else would GOD have put me in the position to have all the skills, knowledge, technology and connections to have it be one of the first photographs sent to newspapers across the world within 30 minutes of the attack? Without digital photography, it would not have happened.

In 2001, digital cameras were cutting edge technology. My career began in the golden age of journalism and digital technology was the future. In 1980, at my first newspaper job in Morganton, NC, word processors began replacing typewriters. By the time I joined the Associated Press, Kodak introduced the first digital camera and Apple premiered its first portable computers that could handle digital imaging.

I embraced the technology, pushing its early limits as it took me around the world, using a hybrid of film photographs digitized from negatives and transmitted by early versions of email. I was ahead of the game and it all led to September 11, 2001, when I raised a digital camera, and took the defining image of my career.

Religion has always been a part of my life, and this image called into question everything I had learned throughout the journey. Emails called into question both my personal religious views and my motives. Some saw it for what it was, light hitting smoke in a way that created whatever your mind perceived and most had the same reaction.

What do I believe it is? It’s the face of the devil… from every religion I have been a part of. Do I believe it was the devil? If there were souls leaving the building and the moment I took the photograph was when the terrorists souls left the building, then yes, the devil was there.

— Mark D Phillips, August 2026

** I will be releasing a chapter a week through 9/11/2026 of my story, “IS IT REAL?” Satan in the Smoke, 9/11, chronicling how this photograph came to be, the firestorm it created, and its lasting legacy in the history of our 47-year war with Iran and its terrorists.