Black Alicelette: Jill Greenberg's Photography

Friday 18 September 2009

Jill Greenberg's Photography

Jill Greenberg, pictured above in a self-portrait with a Orangutan.

I find Jill Greenberg's work massively emotive. I've been posting photos of children taken by her for a few days, so thought a quick profile was in order.

I first came across Greenberg when she photographed Gwen Stefani for the cover of her album The Sweet Escape. Two pictures from the album cover, which demonstrate Greenberg's clever use of lighting to heighten a subject's emotional pull are below.

I love what Wikipedia calls the "stylized realism" of her work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Greenberg. Her pictures would have been in The Face all the time, were it still up and running; never a bad thing.

Greenberg is most notorious for her exhibition End Times, consisting of photographs of distressed toddlers, five of which have appeared on this blog already, one in the post below. The photographs, which were meant to express Greenberg's political dissatisfaction with America in 2006, kicked up a storm because it was assumed that Greenberg must have harmed, or even abused, the children in some way to provoke such strong reactions. She says not; she simply took away their candy before taking a picture, and returned it straight after. Her account can be found on her website http://www.manipulator.com/.

Here are some more examples of her work, much of which is both feminist
and political.
Greenberg had been hired to photograph US Presidential candidate John McCain by The Atlantic magazine. After admitting she took extra photos during the photo shoot, with the intention of pursuing her own more liberal political agenda, the magazine refused to pay her expenses. More info on Wikipedia and the rest of the web.

She has also photographed animals (my favourite subject of hers),
Fashion shoots,
and Celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan.