Would you do this to your kids?

ziggy53

Would you do this to anyone else's kids?

Jill Greenberg torments children to evoke emotion? Sick and sadistic, or crazy and shrewd like a fox?

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20387113-38198,00.html

http://www.paulkopeikingallery.com/artists/greenberg/index0.htm

... And what do you think of her photographic manipulation of the tones and hues?

ziggy53

Richard

ziggy53 wrote:

Would you do this to anyone else's kids?

Jill Greenberg torments children to evoke emotion? Sick and sadistic, or crazy and shrewd like a fox?

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20387113-38198,00.html

http://www.paulkopeikingallery.com/artists/greenberg/index0.htm

... And what do you think of her photographic manipulation of the tones and hues?

ziggy53

Good grief, talk about over-reacting. I don't approve of her technique and would never stoop to anything like that myself, but calling it child abuse is just dumb. Why not call it a holocaust as well? GMAB.

Jeffro

rsinmadrid wrote:

Good grief, talk about over-reacting. I don't approve of her technique and would never stoop to anything like that myself, but calling it child abuse is just dumb. Why not call it a holocaust as well? GMAB.

Now making your child totally lose it, on purpose, is crazy. I have to wonder why any parent would want to make their child throw a fit, just to get a picture. A one time photo, where you intentionally make your child cry, may not legally be child abuse, but it sure isn't good parenting...in my opinion. If you were to take your child there repeatedly I would bet a case could be made against you, as an unfit parent.

I don't find the pictures pleasing though, not the colors, tone, style...jmo.

rjpat

I would say that making a child cry just to get a picture is reprehensible, but the way that she did it was not abusive (IMHO).

ian408

I can imagine a parent taking a lollipop or other object away from a child
for a reason but not simply to take their photograph. That seems pretty
cruel to me.

Nice lighting in the photo tho.

richtersl

Intentionally doing that to a child is tacky and just plain wrong. :nono I wouldn't call it child abuse, just an example of poor manners.

Why not just get a group of kids that age together into a play group and be ready with a camera? One of them is bound to make another one cry and then she can quickly take all the pictures she wants of the crying child until an adult steps in to intervene.

But at $4000-$6000 a pop, this photographer has to be laughing all the way to the bank.

I can't say that I care much for that technique. I think that B&W would yield a much more pleasing result.

colourbox

I saw the gallery owner speak (the subject was how to deal with galleries), and this subject came up at the end of his speech. I decided the controversy was overblown. While the article describes the lollipop withdrawal technique, what it leaves out is that a few moments after the photo is taken, the kid gets the lollipop and is back to normal. Young kids go in and out of crying all the time, and for far longer periods of time, and often it's because a parent rightly denies the child something they shouldn't be having. The comparably brief crying time in the photo studio is not going to etch itself in the kid's mind.

But these images affect us because of the power of photography: We see the cry frozen, permanently, and magnified.

This is not a form of photography I like, and I thought the photographer's relating the crying children to contemporary political themes was a real stretch, and I wouldn't buy or emulate those photos, but in perspective I don't think the photographer is abusive.

Malte

I wholeheartedly disapprove. It gives me the same feeling I get when I see kids tormenting animals or someone bullying a weaker person; I want to smack her silly but I know I wouln't be right in doing so.

Saying that kids cry all te time anyway is a copout. If she had shot them during one of those fits, fine, but intentionally inflicting pain or stress to a child is just plain wrong.

Malte

gus

What a sick & twisted individual.

SpeshulEd

Call me mean and coldhearted, but I think any kind of photography that can get this type of reaction from its viewers is great.

I read an interview with the photographer about these pictures. She wasn't tormenting them in anyway. I've been in department stores a billion times where I've seen children getting pictures taken and just crying their eyes out for no reason other than having to sit there with the flashes going off.

I think the angry reaction we get from these pictures has more to do with the way she made them look. The children actually look like they're in pain and being tormented, not just crying for a lollipop.

Or, maybe I'm jsut a little sick and sadistic.

ziggy53

Perhaps the issue can be clarified through some thought experiments.

If it is acceptable for the photographer to do this once, take the lollipop away, is it acceptable to do it more than once? After all, the child may not evoke the appropriate response with only one action.

If it is acceptable more than once, how much is too much? 10 times? 100 times?

Can we all agree that 100 times is too much? After all, if you do this to a lesser animal, a dog for instance, you will certainly see a negative effect. You might even get bitten. I know people that have been bitten for "teasing" a dog in this fashion. Do this to a child, and I'll bet child protective services would have a case.

So no responsible adult would likely do this to a child right? Unfortunately for the child, it doesn't matter who does it. If it is another adult, or another child, that act of teasing becomes torment at some point.

Now understand that many photographers and even parents are going to try to duplicate the success of Jill Greenberg. Even the parents of these children in the photographs are going to try to duplicate the process. Why? Why not, they will say. After all, Jill says it doesn't hurt the kids, and she made lots of money doing this.

So others will try, and they will try some more, because they won't get the same response as Jill, and they won't get the same pictures as Jill. The brothers and sisters will watch and learn that this is acceptable behavior, and they will duplicate the behavior. Eventually, babies "will" be tormented, hundreds of times.

I am not saying this can happen, I'm saying this is all predictable human behavior. I'm saying that this will happen because of Jill Greenberg.

The only reasonable course of action is to sanction Jill Greenberg. Take away any professional status as a photographer, and take away her business license, ... and then take her picture.

After all, it's just like taking candy from a baby. (Ah, the irony.)

ziggy53

SpeshulEd

Children shouldn't have candy anyway, give 'em a chunk of broccoli and then take a picture of their reaction.

Malte

ziggy53 wrote:

The only reasonable course of action is to sanction Jill Greenberg. Take away any professional status as a photographer, and take away her business license, ... and then take her picture.
ziggy53

Malte

Stormdancing

ziggy53 wrote:

The only reasonable course of action is to sanction Jill Greenberg. Take away any professional status as a photographer, and take away her business license, ... and then take her picture.

After all, it's just like taking candy from a baby. (Ah, the irony.)

ziggy53

HaHa!!!!!!!!

Seefutlung

ziggy53 wrote:

... The only reasonable course of action is to sanction Jill Greenberg. Take away any professional status as a photographer, and take away her business license, ... and then take her picture.

After all, it's just like taking candy from a baby. (Ah, the irony.)

ziggy53

... hey, just take away her camera.

Having two children of my own ... I tend to side with SpeshulEd. What she did isn't that big of a deal. I appreciate that she took her photography to a different level, her images, although I found her presentation odd (lighting and PS), the shots are still interesting ... they make us think ... from the baller infant to the stoic baby ... they all made us think ... and as such ... the images were succcessful.

If Jill had asked me to submit my children for a one-time experience of lollipop removal ... I probably would have agreed. I do not believe taking candy away from a baby, as a one time deal, will leave any emotional scaring or mental damage.

... And I am a parent that has never hit my children (even once). (Violence has nothing to do with discipline.)

wholenewlight

poor taste . . . probably

but the quote in the article about arresting her on charges of child abuse . . . give me a break . Overblown.

Awais Yaqub

what happened to this world.This is way more then taking camera away from photographer . I wonder for how long one kid has to weep for one shot
And what is procedure to make them weep.:cry
i saw these pics on BBC

SloYerRoll

Tacky. Pointless. Meanhearted.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
I agree w/ Ziggy that photographers will try to emulate what she does and that is the part that really scares me. People have this ability to take things to extremes, and this is no exception to the case. <o:p></o:p>
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I completely disagree in doing shots like these. This is showing kids that it is OK to be mean to someone as long as you have a good justifiable reason. <o:p></o:p>
And I (and probably you) can justify ANYTHING if we try hard enough. <o:p></o:p>
It’s bad enough allot of parents do a crappy job and let their kids get fat by using the TV as a babysitter and caring about their personal life instead of being good role models. These shots show by example how little children mean to some parents. <o:p></o:p>
Children are mini biographers of their parent’s life. They may not end up doing the exact thing that the parent did. But the child will manifest that anger, love, whatever the case may be in some way.
Sure why not. We may as well raise some more crappy wives/husbands there are definitely not enough screwed up people out there.
It makes me cringe looking at those shots.
Very good Photoshop work though. Even though I hated the shot. The pp was pretty dang good.
<o:p></o:p>
JMO
<o:p></o:p>
-Jon<o:p></o:p>

SteveM

Child abuse? Hahahhahah. I think this photographer is actually wasting money on lollypops. She just needs kids like mine to shoot, where they ask for something every 19 seconds, and when you tell them no, you get that same reaction.

I certainly don't think this is child abuse, but I wouldn't sign up for this photo shoot even with a big modeling fee. The closest thing I can come to is the feeling of having to take my son for his infant-2year immunizations. I knew what we were going there for, I knew what was about to happen, knew it wasn't going to damage him (barring an allergic reaction), but it still broke my heart. Now these people aren't jabbing needles into kids (that we know of! Fry them!) but if it were more a case of "Smack Lester in the head again, the lighting was bad on that one", it'd be a different story. Art is defined as an experience. If it makes you feel, it's art. This would be uncomfortable art.

P.S. Confession: At one point when my son was about three, after being told numerous times not to climb his bedroom shelves, he did it again and got himself stuck in a 1'x3' "pigeon hole" shelf. He kinda looked like a stringbean lying in one of those glass shadowboxes. I admit it...I waited the extra 15 seconds before getting him out to grab my camera and snap a photo. (Photo withheld to protect the innocent).

Steve

Jeffro

I saw they did a story on her on one of those cheesey entertainment shows...access hollywood or something. She was complaining that bloggers were bashing her. Too bad.

Isn't hurting her sales, they said Drew Carey just bought $40,000 worth of her stuff, but they didn't say what it was. I hope it wasn't these crying kids.

SteveM., I was thinking about the DR. and shot thing myself. What if the kid goes in for the next photo shoot and is scared to go....knowing he/she is going to be forced to cry? I'm with you, it'd break my heart knowing I was going to MAKE my little ones cry.

I guess she gets the last laugh.