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mark@markdphillips.com 646-226-4680 Brooklyn, New York |
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No reuse or reproduction without written permission. Is It Real? A Photographer in the Digital AgeChapter 1 We live in a digital age. Photography has changed from silver-based to pixel-based. When a digital image is created, the photographer knows it is real. But in this new age, how can we prove that the image isn't altered? Digital imagery has completely taken over the marketplace. The taking of images is a social event. The camera is no longer just the recorder of history, it is now the means of sharing the image. When an image is taken, the photographer can pass the image to the subject instantly. But as time passes, and the image is manipulated, the original "negative" is lost forever. The advent of digital did not occur overnight. Over the last twenty years, the photojournalism industry has been the proving ground for nearly all of the technology. When I entered the profession in 1978, the conversion from analog to digital was still on its way. Over the next quarter century, digital took over and changed my profession like no other. The events of September 11 and the period immediately after were the culmination of a career that witnessed this change. Even after time has passed, it all seems so surreal. All I did was take a photograph. The events of September 11, 2001, and what happened afterwards, will determine everything that transpires for years to come. For me, it became the defining moment in a 23-year photographic career. During that time, digital imaging slowly creeped into the profession. September 11th brought the age of digital photography to the forefront. One image. One click of the shutter changed it all. Light and shadows. Smoke and air. Seconds after the second plane struck the south tower of the World Trade Center, an image, created by pixels rather than film, became an immediate sensation. September 11, 2001 was the second day of preschool for my two-year-old daughter, an exciting day in her life. Big enough to keep my wife, Andrea Peyser, a columnist with The New York Post, and me home to take her to school as a family. It started with a gasp and a scream from the back of the house where Andrea was getting ready. "Mark, come see this now!" Andrea shouted. The picture on the television screen was one no one ever dreamed could happen. The impossible was underway. The Today Show was broadcasting live footage of the World Trade Center's north tower on fire. Instincts took over. Not even waiting for an explanation, I ran from the room, grabbed two cameras, and went to the roof of my home in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Living just three miles from lower Manhattan, I had photographed the Trade Center Towers hundreds of times, and many times from the deck atop my house. As I raised the hatch to climb out on the roof, I heard the loudest explosion in my memory. Looking toward the city, smoke and flames were billowing from both towers. I immediately raised my digital Olympus E-10 camera and took the first photo. THE photo. Smoke was billowing from the towers. Through the viewfinder, all I could see was the smoke. It filled the sky spreading into a huge plume. It looked like two chimney stacks. Sirens were wailing everywhere. All I could think about was the fact that the buildings were burning. More and more people began appearing on the rooftops. Neighbors across the street shouted to me from their rooftop. Did I see the second plane fly into the building? At that point, I didn't even now what had caused the huge explosion I heard as I came onto the roof. I really had no idea. Terrorism? It hadn't even registered as such. Police helicopters began circling the building. I switched cameras and began shooting color negative film with a 400mm lens. I had only two rolls of film and one digital card. As I finished the final frames of my film, another neighbor began shouting to me from his rooftop. Richard Pyle, a writer for The Associated Press, lived directly behind me. He was on the phone with his office in Rockefeller Center, feeding them first person coverage of what he witnessed from Brooklyn. He told them that I was shooting photographs from my rooftop. I was well known in the Photography division at The Associated Press. When I moved to New York in 1989, I immediately started freelancing for the AP, becoming a staff photographer in 1990. Barbara Woike, the editor on duty, had worked with me during that time. We were friends. "Barbara Woike wants to talk to you!" Pyle shouted. "Have her call me. I'm on my way back downstairs." Barbara was on the phone when I entered my apartment. I slipped the smart media card from my digital camera into my Macintosh laptop, opened the first photo on the card, the first photo taken from the roof. Smoke billowed from the two towers like two great chimneys. "I have a really good image ready to go," I said to Barbara. She said to send as many as I could. The time was 9:35 am. When we hung up, I accessed the Internet, and began transmitting. I had not noticed anything out of the ordinary viewing the photograph on my laptop. AP also noticed nothing unusual as they sent the photo out worldwide as NY142. While I continued to send out photographs, the World Trade Center, the shining glory of lower Manhattan, collapsed to the ground. Running back up to the roof, nothing but smoke and dust was visible. The buildings of Manhattan were completely obscured by the cloud heading toward Brooklyn. I sat down on the roof and cried. The next afternoon, my photo agent, Kevin Kushel of SLPstock, called me and said, "You know you have a face in your photo. In the smoke." My immediate response was "Yea, sure." It was the end of a horrible two days and the last thing I expected to hear. Tuesday, I had walked from my home to office to transmit photographs. Ash was falling like a nuclear winter on our neighborhood. Andrea had picked up letterhead from World Trade Center companies and burned business cards from individuals off our outdoor deck. We had no idea if the people named on the documents were alive or dead. Kushel said, "I'm going to crop it out and e-mail it back to you." I did not check e-mail until the next morning. To my surprise, there were over 150 messages. One of the first was from Kevin. I opened the attachment. My first reaction was 'What the hell is that?' Then I actually began to shake while I opened the original file to see if it was really there. It was in the original file. Another e-mail had the front page of The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware, attached to it. The face was huge. It began to dominate the image. I could not look at the photograph without immediately seeing "the face." As I opened more of the e-mails, I was struck by their message. More and more of them just asked, "Is it Real?" I didn't know how to respond. Andrea was covering the disaster for the New York Post. Her columns had required her to go to Ground Zero on the second day. Her reaction was the same as mine, incredulousness. Email continued to arrive. Some of it harsh. Little did I know what was coming. One of the papers that originally ran the photograph, The Saginaw News of Saginaw, Michigan, ran the photo a second time on September 13th with a story that was headlined "What is that image?" and a lead that read: "A front-page photograph on more than 13,000 copies of Tuesday's Saginaw News has prompted some to believe that Satan himself presided over terrorist attacks on the United States." That story was the beginning of a media blitz that I would never forget. It would call into question some of my fundamental beliefs, and bring up new questions for the digital revolution that was redefining the photographic industry. For the first time, I was truly on the other side of a media frenzy. "Is It Real? A Photographer in the Digital Age" |