Now That's a D#*% Head

Disclaimer: I know I've been watching the Daily Show too much, which recently has been full of Anthony Weiner visuals.

But am I the only one who sees something unintentional in this illustration that ran in today's Star Tribune, accompanying an op-ed about religious persecution in Southeast Asia?



I looked at it every way I could think of to make sense of it as something other than what I was seeing, discussed it with other members of my household, and finally realized it's intended as kind of Cubist rendering, with the person's head turned 90 degrees, facing downward.

That's a little tiny ear at the top, an eye at bottom slightly right of center, and a nose lost in shadow at the bottom part of middle left.

It's a bit clearer as shown on the Strib website, which doesn't suffer from being printed as a halftone screen onto newsprint:


But still, it's like one of those visual illusions you can see only one way until you force yourself to see it the other way, and then it's hard to go back to the way you saw it at first:


Or is it just me?