Dear Ms Greenberg,
Congratulations on the debut of your ‘End Times’ exhibit at the Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles.
For being some photographs of kids crying, it sure is generating a lot of attention, isn’t it? Michelle Malkin has called you “unbelievably sick” for making the three-year old kids in your photos cry, and other bloggers now hate your guts. I am a blogger, Jill, but I don’t hate your guts. I see also that your fellow photographers Thomas Hawk and Jeremiah McNichols are “appalled” at the way you stripped the kids and had their parents pretend they were leaving so that you could get a picture of them blubbering helplessly. My wife is a photographer, Jill, but I don’t think she is appalled. I see also that parents are calling you a child abuser. I am a parent of a three-year old, Jill, and I don’t think you are a child abuser.
After all, your own daughter is featured in your work. I’m sure you simply took away her lollipop in order to achieve the result you were looking for. Perhaps called her a few profanities, or something. Maybe shone a laser in her eyes a few times, just briefly, or bounced a soft ball off her head – a soft ball, Jill, not one that would cause anyone any harm. You and I understand this. After all, there is an important message to your art and a good reason why the little girls and boys had to cry.
They should be crying. You said it yourself, Jill: “…The children, if they knew, would be really upset about the way the world is going.”
When you shot your first kid – not with a gun of course Jill! – you said, “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 re-election.”
Of course it isn’t actually necessary that the kid really did think the world horrible. Neither is it actually necessary that the kid really did share your pathological hatred of President George W Bush. Neither is it actually necessary that the kid grow up to be a left-liberal like yourself at all, Jill. What matters is your ability to portray them artistically as though that is what they actually thought. You and I know this. It is art. And Thomas Hawk was surely out of line when he said: “I further believe that Jill Greenberg’s work should not be viewed through the art-historical lens of edgy, contemporary art, but is instead a cultural hiccup that should be shelved with divisive cultural artefacts like black minstrelry, art involving the physical abuse of animals, and other works that reflect a sensibility so alien that it is better approached not as art, but as the fractured product of a diseased mind or a necrotic culture.”
That is plainly ridiculous, isn’t it Jill? No, you simply “…thought [your images] made a kind of political statement about the current state of anxiety a lot of people are in about the future of the country.” In reality of course the kids were making not a political statement but a statement of necessity about the current state of anxiety they had about their developing infant needs not being met… but that is inconsequential.
Art, Jill, is whatever we say it is; why can’t these people understand that? It is especially critical to remember the fluidity of truth in a time such as this, when people are being forced to endure the presidency of Bush two times in a row. It must be that both the 2000 and 2004 votes were manipulated somehow – how else could this have happened? Some people say that we should get over it; it was almost two years ago. But not me, Jill. It is important to continue protesting in whatever way we can, by whatever means necessary. Nothing should stand in the way of our truth. And that is what you have done, Jill: by whatever means you found necessary you portrayed the sheer horror of life in 2006 and the doom that awaits these innocent, blubbering ankle-biters. I applaud you.
And, in a show of solidarity with you, Jill, please find attached my contribution to our art: a large turd, sad because of the competition your exhibit is giving it these days.
It’s caption is: ‘Demented Times.’
Yours sincerely,
John Wright
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