Jill Greenberg and the Developement of Portrait Photography

Greenberg's photographic curiosity is centered in portraiture, a genre which was established with the advent of the camera. Greenberg is a prime example of an artists who has a 'personal vision that is readily identifiable'. While portrait photography of the early 19th century was highly formal, structured and emotionally austere, Greenberg explores the intense emotion and the true identity of her subjects.

Greenberg is known as 'the manipulator', combining harsh lighting in the capture stage with heavy digital editing in Photoshop. Greenberg told Digital Photo Pro that she uses 'a lot of masking, apply colour curves, dodge and burn. It's all done by hand, like painting.' These techniques could be interesting for my own experiment in digitally manipulating photographs in Photoshop.

Greenberg's work is often clouded by controversy, particularly her 'End Times' series in 2006 which featured hyper real, stylized portraits of toddlers. The toddlers were captured in moments of intense emotion, through controversial methods such as offering the child candy and then taking it away, which some deemed unethical. Greenberg, however intended it as a post modern political comment, stating; 'The first little boy I shot, Liam, suddenly became hysterically upset. It reminded me of helplessness and anger I felt towards the current political and social situation. I made me think of my outrage at our false reason for going to war in Iraq and the scandalous way the conflict was sold to the American people'.