Exploit and Click

[Brutuskend]

photography: From daguerreotypes to digital.
Exploit and Click
The fuss over the photographer who makes kids cry.
By Jim Lewis
Posted Friday, July 7, 2006, at 6:35 PM ET
Like many people, I dislike having my picture taken, and the fact that I love to look at photography, to think about it, and sometimes to write about it, has done little to leaven my antipathy toward participating in it. Having a camera pointed at me makes me self-conscious, a feeling I do my best to avoid; and it pricks my vanity. (I used to tell myself I was simply unphotogenic, but in time I came to realize that, no, in fact I just look like that.) Moreover, I always wind up feeling slightly violated: My countenance is among my most intimate possessions, and when a photographer makes off with an image of it I feel like I've been fleeced. Anthropologists have described isolated tribes who would not allow themselves to be photographed by Western visitors because they were convinced that some part of their soul was being stolen. There is something to be said for such a belief.

Exploitation is photography's true métier: I take that to be a fact, though not such a damning one as it may appear to be. There are other professions, after all, that traffic in similar kinds of advantage-taking (psychoanalysis is one; journalism is another), and exploitation, like anything else, can be well or badly done. Some photographers negotiate it nimbly, with a kind of moral intelligence, and the art they make is brilliant and enlightening; and some are clumsy or crass. Which brings me to the work of Jill Greenberg and the quarrels that have sprung up around it in the past few weeks.

Greenberg is an L.A.-based photographer whose work, judging from her Web site, the all-too-aptly named www.manipulator.com, has generally been commercial and editorial: ads for Target, portraits of celebrities, that sort of thing. But she also has a small art career, showing more conceptual work in galleries, and she has an exhibit up now at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery on Wilshire Boulevard. The show is titled End Times, and it consists of a few dozen large photographs of infants and toddlers throwing tantrums: sobbing, red-faced, staring furiously. Fair enough. But they're not meant to be read as mere baby pictures; they're meant to be a statement. As Greenberg herself explains in the gallery's press release, "The first little boy I shot, Liam, suddenly became hysterically upset. It reminded me of helplessness and anger I feel about our current political and social situation." "As a parent," she continues, "I have to reckon with the knowledge that our children will suffer for the mistakes our government is making. Their pain is a precursor of what is to come."

Link to the full story with links to the pics

It seems people will get worked up over ANYTHING these days....

 

[waggy]

hmm i agree with the one guy who said that was abuse. makeing a child cry and have a fit so you can take pictures is not good. that is not art.

 

[episodic]

Originally posted by: waggy
hmm i agree with the one guy who said that was abuse. makeing a child cry and have a fit so you can take pictures is not good. that is not art.

So popping a paper bag would be child abuse if it made a kid scream?

 

[waggy]

Originally posted by: episodic

Originally posted by: waggy
hmm i agree with the one guy who said that was abuse. makeing a child cry and have a fit so you can take pictures is not good. that is not art.

So popping a paper bag would be child abuse if it made a kid scream?

while it may not be physical abuse. useing a small child this way is wrong on many levels.

 

[episodic]

Originally posted by: waggy

Originally posted by: episodic

Originally posted by: waggy
hmm i agree with the one guy who said that was abuse. makeing a child cry and have a fit so you can take pictures is not good. that is not art.

So popping a paper bag would be child abuse if it made a kid scream?

while it may not be physical abuse. useing a small child this way is wrong on many levels.

You've never watched a movie with a screaming baby in it?

 

[SlitheryDee]

Originally posted by: episodic

Originally posted by: waggy
hmm i agree with the one guy who said that was abuse. makeing a child cry and have a fit so you can take pictures is not good. that is not art.

So popping a paper bag would be child abuse if it made a kid scream?

If the sole purpose of popping the bag was to make the child scream then it ceases to be a random event and becomes a means to an end.

They needed a screaming child for the picture. If popping the bag didn't make the child scream then what would they do next?

 

[episodic]

Originally posted by: SlitheryDee

Originally posted by: episodic

Originally posted by: waggy
hmm i agree with the one guy who said that was abuse. makeing a child cry and have a fit so you can take pictures is not good. that is not art.

So popping a paper bag would be child abuse if it made a kid scream?

If the sole purpose of popping the bag was to make the child scream then it ceases to be a random event and becomes a means to an end.

They needed a screaming child for the picture. If popping the bag didn't make the child scream then what would they do next?

Again, have you guys never seen a movie with a screaming baby/toddler? Not much different. Movies require them to scream much longer over multiple takes. Photography at least is rather forgiving.

I'm not sure how I feel about parents who 'lend their children' out to these events. Many a child actor seems to make it just fine. . .

It doesn't take much to make a toddler screem. With lots of toddlers you can just sit them down and walk away. . . *SNAP* parent is probably right back hushing them.

Would I 'lend my kid out for that' - probably not. I guess I don't really see anything wrong with it. . .but it wouldn't be for me. . .

 

[imported_Mike]

Like many people, I dislike having my picture taken, and the fact that I love to look at photography, to think about it, and sometimes to write about it, has done little to leaven my antipathy toward participating in it. Having a camera pointed at me makes me self-conscious, a feeling I do my best to avoid; and it pricks my vanity. (I used to tell myself I was simply unphotogenic, but in time I came to realize that, no, in fact I just look like that.) Moreover, I always wind up feeling slightly violated

Lame, get some f'ing confidence.

 

[Zenmervolt]

From the article:

Exploitation lies at the root of every interaction between a photographer and a human subject, and every photographer worth a damn knows this.

BULL SH*T.

The photographer who manipulates or exploits his subject is creating a commodity, not art. One way or another the manipulators and exploiters produce a consumable, they are selling something, be it an idea or or product or whatever, something is being pushed on the world.

Ansel Adams did not manipulate his subjects. The great candid photographers do not manipulate their subjects.

THe author writes of enjoying "looking at" or "thinking about" photography, but he is conspicuously mute about whether he has ever attempted it. It's absolutely shameless of him to write so negatively about it when he has, by his own admission through omission, never been seriously behind a camera (everyone takes snap-shots, but that does not a photographer make). He makes claims that require an intimate knowledge of photography but he isn't a photographer. He just doesn't have any basis, beyond blind prejudice, to make the claims he makes.

May he be beaten with a large Bogen tripod.

ZV

 

[episodic]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt
From the article:

Exploitation lies at the root of every interaction between a photographer and a human subject, and every photographer worth a damn knows this.

BULL SH*T.

The photographer who manipulates or exploits his subject is creating a commodity, not art. One way or another the manipulators and exploiters produce a consumable, they are selling something, be it an idea or or product or whatever, something is being pushed on the world.

Ansel Adams did not manipulate his subjects. The great candid photographers do not manipulate their subjects.

THe author writes of enjoying "looking at" or "thinking about" photography, but he is conspicuously mute about whether he has ever attempted it. It's absolutely shameless of him to write so negatively about it when he has, by his own admission through omission, never been seriously behind a camera (everyone takes snap-shots, but that does not a photographer make). He makes claims that require an intimate knowledge of photography but he isn't a photographer. He just doesn't have any basis, beyond blind prejudice, to make the claims he makes.

May he be beaten with a large Bogen tripod.

ZV

Powerful statement

:beer:

 

[episodic]

Reading and following some links, it seems the photographer did this with the parents there. The technique was simple giving the child a lollipop and taking it away. The exact same technique movie studios do when wanting a young kid to cry.