What happened:
Artist Jill Greenberg took some candid shots of Presidential hopeful John McCain while photographing him for the cover of this month’s Atlantic. She then manipulated some of those images and inserted captions into the compositions. For example, in one image, McCain is lit from below and his mouth replaced by a pointy-toothed bloody orifice. The phrase “I am a bloodthirsty warmonger” appears in red type above his head.
How people are reacting:
Some congratulate Greenberg because she did not compromise herself as an artist while doing commercial work for the Atlantic.
“Although I admit if the tables were turned I’d be apoplectic, as it is I am just delighted. After a week of being ground into the dirt, figuratively, by Hellbitch Palin, it’s refreshing and cheering to have a win, no matter how below-the-belt, from our team. Greenberg is my hero.” Read more...
Others feel like Greenberg did in fact compromise herself by reneging on her contract.
“Is it right that Greenberg would take a job with the vision being her formula ‘ringlight-fill-with-hotter-keylight-with-two-sidelight-hotter-rims,’ but then consciously make the choice to ‘leave his eyes red, and his skin rough’?”
Read more...
Many defend the candidate’s party vehemently and call the artist lots of foul names.
“Greenberg is a revolting pus-filled boil on the ass of humanity.” Read more...
And a good number lament that these images might have the exact opposite effect of what the artist intended.
“If anything, you end up sympathizing with McCain.” Read more...
The cover of the October issue of the Atlantic with the photo that Jill Greenberg was hired to take.
The fact is that Greenberg’s manipulated images (or something very like them) could just as easily have been made with stock images of the candidate. The artist’s works are simply of a higher quality than what many anti-McCain artists have already made. She used her access to the candidate to make some more exciting lighting choices than what’s available in public photos of McCain, and her images are higher resolution than the photos that can be ripped from magazines. But, the works are not particularly imaginative, and they certainly don’t allow room for thought--making them more propaganda than art.
What I’m saying is that the images themselves are really quite disappointing.* The inventiveness--the art?--is in Greenberg’s gesture, in what it means for an artist to completely disregard the implicit trust that her subject placed in her. That is Greenberg’s most powerful statement.
Maybe McCain or his people or the publication were stupid to have trusted this artist, but the fact remains that they did and that she broke that trust. That is the powerful intention behind some rather so-so images, and that is what will survive long after we’ve forgotten the manipulated pictures.
In the end, this was an amazing marketing move for the artist and for McCain as well. The controversy will doubtless help Greenberg’s career (though I can only wonder what she could possibly do to top this one), and the buzz is exactly what the candidate’s camp is desperate for in the media competition that is a Presidential election. It seems like a win-win situation for all involved--except, of course, for us. These images helped zero intelligent conversations to happen about politics,** and they made artists seem untrustworthy.
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*One of Greenberg’s manipulated shots shows a monkey defecating on McCain’s head. Now, if she’d actually convinced the candidate to pose for that photo, that would have been something extraordinary!
**Though they did get a lot of people talking about the moral issues involved in portraiture…
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Hmmmm....perhaps the above comment adds depth to the blog title about babies and candy? If so, quite clever Gwenn 
I’m ok with propaganda as art, but I agree that the choices she made were a little too easy of a knee-jerk. The greater problem is definitely the trust issue. I like art because there is no human subject commitee that has to be deferred to, but the artist cant simply disregard the personhood of the subject - looking at the subject as only what it can give to the artist. I saw the End Times show in LA a couple years back and Greenburg happened to be there being interviewed for an LA weekly tv magazine and so it was interesting hearing her commitment to her subjects (the kids). After her interview we asked her how she captured the kids crying and she chuckled and told that sometimes she would take away a cookie or toy she had just given them. She explained that these little ones would not remember this event and that kids cry all the time and she did say with a smile that she felt bad about seeing them cry, but that she really needed the image. I wondered because if kids cry all the time then maybe you should just wait for that to happen and not instigate, disregarding their feeling, even if they wont remember the details of having their favorite toy taken. If her schedule didnt permit her to wait with the kids for the image then maybe this body of work wasnt for her. Her site is called “the manipulator” and I can see how that’s true for not just the image but the subject as well.