Artist review 8: Jill Greenberg

Significance:

The Monkey Portraits are seemingly trivial and cute, however, they could be put in the context of more complicated issues. I see them as a take on contemporary fine art photography with its quest for expressions revealing something profound. And here they are, animals doing a great job with the emotions that recent photography has adopted as a norm. Are emotions in portraiture sincere, can we trust them or take them as the focus in a body work? The answer to me is "yes" and "no".

The idea of mimicking art history in absurd way to engage people in a contemporary topic is what I tried with the Dutch Baroque still lives with plastic bags. Would that fall into the category of editorial or photo illustration? What would be a way to go beyond that?

It is interesting how the monkey images can be one thing for me: challenging uniqueness of expressions; and another for her: anti republican statement. Nevertheless these images are contradiction to her other work. The people in her commercial portraits put side by side with the monkeys gain another meaning.

Bio:

Jill Greenberg was born in Montreal, Canada in 1967. At the age of 2, her family moved to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan where Greenberg began her arts education while attending Cranbrook’s elementary school where she was in the photo darkroom in 5th grade. Many extra-curricular courses supplemented her arts education: Kingswood, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Association, and the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit. Before senior year in High School, she enrolled in Rhode Island School of Design’s pre-college program in Illustration 1984. Senior year, she was the recipient of the Traub Scholarship for Art from Andover High School, which afforded her the opportunity to attend Parsons in Paris for Photography the summer before entering college in Providence at RISD.She earned a BFA with honors, RISD ‘89 Photo with a senior thesis called “The Female Object”; took a class at Brown University, in Semiotics. After graduation, Greenberg moved to New York City.

Quotes:1) "Like others at the Atlantic, I was appalled to read about the actions of Jill Greenberg, the freelance photographer who took the cover portrait that illustrates my article about John McCain. Greenberg doctored photographs of McCain she took during her Atlantic-arranged shoot, which took place last month in Las Vegas. She has posted these doctored photographs on her website, which you can go find yourself, if you must. Suffice it to say that her "art" is juvenile, and on occasion repulsive. This is not the issue, of course; the issue is that she betrayed this magazine, and disgraced her profession." Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2008/09/about-that-mccain-photo/8825/

2)"For the series “Monkey Portraits”, Greenberg has created a series of monkey portraits and asks us to consider, in another way, where we are coming from. We look into her monkey’s expressions, their faces -- their peculiar physiognomy -- and somehow see ourselves. It is frightening and disorienting and exhilarating and awesome. She mischievously shows us another type of mirror-stage, where we confront an ancient and distorted reflection, another startling spectacle, and try to make sense of who, or what we are seeing. By intentionally anthropomorphizing her monkeys, we can’t help but identify with their gaze, and be reminded of people we know, expressions that we have seen." http://kopeikingallery.com/exhibitions/view/monkey-portraits

Work:

Jill Greenberg

Jill Greenberg

Samantha Cohn

Lisa Wiseman

Hanna Witte

Amy Elkins

Jill Greenberg

Sophie Barbasch

Jill Greenberg

Dai Oinuma

Jill Greenberg

Georgi Ivanov

Review:

The Atlantic Monthly and McCain Very interesting. Did she actually achieve something besides much ado? I think she only victimized McCain by being very unprofessional and juvenile. There are other ways to make a catching, yet sophisticated image of a politician and definitely not by exploiting a situation. This might as well hurt other photographers by affecting the relation photographer - client.

Representation: www.clampart.com

Web Site: http://www.manipulator.com