Jill Greenberg vs Crybabies Everywhere

So Jill Greenberg's new exhibition, End Times is amazing. Essentially she photographs children below 3, in a hysterical state of crying tantrum. She achieves this by giving, and then taking away, candy. Allegedly, sometimes she has their parents leave the room if they aren't adequately panicked. Here are a couple of shots:







So no big deal, right? The wee babes end up with the candy and parental love at the end of the shoot, and her photos are stunning and raw.

Except that some people are pretty pissed off about it. A particular gentleman - a San Francisco investment banker cum new media enthusiast and blogger, who writes under the pen name Thomas Hawk is particularly pissed about it, and wrote an angry angry article in response. As he puts it:

...what Jill Greenberg is doing makes me want to throw up. And it shouldn't be allowed. I'm torn about even posting this post because she is obviously using her art as an excuse to do something horrible and is looking for publicity and response and that's exactly what I'm giving her here. But I'm hoping that through others being made aware of what she is doing that somehow pressure might be borne to stop it from happening.

Yawn. Obviously the public has, and should have, a vested interest in protecting children from harm. And yes, these photos certainly show children in distress. It's fine that people are talking about it. But the case he, and compatriot blogger Jeremiah McNichols try to make is that these photographs are tantamount to abuse, or at the very least a detached experiment in bullying.

How they single this work out, when children are made to cry in commercials, film and television all the time, using these same methods, is beyond me. Even more, I find it amazing that this piece - depicting age-appropriate emotion in response to age-appropriate crisis, for clearly articulated artistic purposes - provokes such a strong reaction, where the completely age-innaproprate depictions of sexualized children we see constantly in the commercial world doesn't.

Besides, if we're going to start lambasting photographers for torturing children, can we start with this psychotic fucking sadist, please?