Art? Or just mean?

Please remember that this is my blog and therefore my opinion. My opinion cannot be wrong as it it subjective and my opinion – just as yours is not wrong. Please remember that before you send the flaming comments my way.

I actually slept on this to make sure I did indeed want to post about it. I’m having a hard time articulating what I’m thinking, but I think I need to speak out about it. ATM had her opinion on it up, which is how I came to be aware of it.

Jill Greenberg, a photographer, has put together a collection (I guess exhibition is the proper word in the photography world?) called “End Times.” Go take a look at the photos, and come back. I’ll wait.

Okay, now that you’re back, a quote, “The children are provoked by Greenberg taking away their candy or toys. This technique is known as ‘manipulation.'”

There was such an outrage about the exhibition, that Ms. Greenberg had to respond. Apparently this is her interpretation of what the children would express in reaction to world events, if they understood them.

I understand that in the grand scheme of life, a bully (which is what she is) taking someone’s candy away is not going matter. You know, except to the kid the candy was taken away from. I’m NOT saying this is child abuse, as some have claimed. I AM saying it’s mean. And I don’t think any adult, with or without the parents permission, has the right to make a child cry on purpose – to be mean on purpose when they know that what they’re going to do is going to be hurtful to them.

Is this art? No. I don’t think so. Capturing a moment of pain from an unwilling participant is not art. She is simply recording the moment her heart actually turned to stone on film.

I fully understand that pain has been turned into art. I know that in erotic art, there are many portrayals of things of a hurtful nature – the difference? Those participants (hopefully) had consented. I know there are photo journalists who’s photos have turned a nation onto its ear with the stark realities of pain. The difference? They didn’t cause the pain they’re capturing.

“Greenberg’s daugther appears in some of the photographs, and the other children’s parents were present when the photos were taken, the photographer said. ”

The bottom line here is NOT that candy was taken away, or that the child cried – or even that she captured the picture and calls it art. I think the real issue is these toddlers and children now have an imprint on their minds of what it feels like to have an adult hurt them on purpose. No child should have that imprint. I have that imprint. Picture a parent doing it (which is exactly what she did since her daughter is one of the kids) – I can picture it, “Here honey want a lollypop? Good isn’t it? Nope can’t have it.” If you saw this at, say, a block barbeque, you’d be shocked at that parent because it’s just plain mean. We should be even more shocked that this woman did it to many children, and their parents let her make their kids cry on purpose, and then called it art.

“‘If I thought that would have caused any harm to a child then I wouldn’t have done it,’ she said. ‘And as soon as their lollipop was returned they were happy little campers.'”

SO NOT THE POINT. She was mean to children on purpose. To portray an idea that wasn’t their idea.

“Greenberg’s next exhibit features photographs of monkeys in similar poses. She said the monkeys were not harmed in the process.” GREeeeaaaaaat.

An interview with my own comments thrown in – it is after all my blog.

Your images have certainly caused an uproar. What do you say to people who call you a child abuser?

I think they’re insane. I know the comment you’re talking about. I don’t know what the guy’s personal problems are. I don’t think he’s got kids. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and she cries for no reason, a hundred times a day. It’s normal. Maybe getting kids to cry isn’t the nicest thing to do, but I’m not causing anyone permanent psychological damage.

It is normal for children to cry when they’re not getting their own way – especially the younger ones as they’ve no other way to express their displeasure. However, that is entirely different than crying because someone was purposely mean to them for their own motives.

How many kids did you shoot altogether?

Around 35. Some were the children of friends, plus my own daughter; others came from the Ford or Jet Set model agencies. Kid models aren’t very expensive—not as expensive as monkeys, for example.

This one really bothers me for some reason. As if these living creatures, the kids and the monkeys, simply exist for her to express herself – commodities if you will.

How did you get the kids to cry?

Mostly we did it by giving them something, a lollypop, and then taking it away. Some would just cry for no reason—my daughter did that; she didn’t like standing on the apple box I used for a platform because it was a little wobbly. Some just wouldn’t cry at all. For all the kids I worked really fast. We would book 12 or so for one day, and see who we could make cry. At the end of the day I was not in a good mood. I don’t like making little kids cry.

Then for the love of Pete don’t do it.

The lighting is very dramatic. How did you accomplish that?

It’s the same lighting I used for my portraits of monkeys, and I’ve been using it for some recent magazine cover portraits. It’s really flattering frontal light, so the subject doesn’t have to have any actual shine on his or her skin to appear shiny. None of the kids had any makeup on. And also I work on that shiny quality in postproduction.

How did you come up with the idea for the project?

I saw this little girl who’d come to a party with her mom, and she was beautiful, so I thought it might be interesting to photograph her. When they came to my studio, the mother brought along her toddler son, and I decided to shoot him too. We took off his shirt because it was dirty. He started crying on his own, and I shot that, and when I got the contact sheets back I thought, “This could go with a caption, ‘Four More Years,'” like he was appalled at George Bush’s reelection. The images have a real power—they immediately get under your skin. The emotion you see is just so compelling, yet they’re beautiful at the same time. That was one of the things that interested me about the project—the strength and beauty of the images as images. I also thought they made a kind of political statement about the current state of anxiety a lot of people are in about the future of the country. Sometimes I just feel like crying about the way things are going.

Here’s what I don’t like. Those kids are making HER political statement without it being the reason for their emotion. She’s manipulating an image into something that it’s not, but she seems to want it to be in her head.

She’s hurting children (yes, temporary – but she IS causing them pain) to make a political statement about how they would feel about the political climate if they knew about it. In my eyes, it’s wrong and it is not art.