It’s Time for the Manipulator
Written on September 22, 2008
I think just about everyone has chipped in their 2 cents on this little commotion caused by photographer Jill Greenberg and her commission by The Atlantic Monthly to shoot portraits of Senator John McCain.
A Photo Editor of course wrote a great bit of commentary and generated lots of comments, Conscientious had a very thoughtful and critical analysis of the situation and on the flip-side Leslie Burns mounted a defense.
Here’s my two cents.
I do not know Jill Greenberg. And while this blog is not exactly fond of the outgoing administration and the prospect of a McCain/Palin White House, it finds her actions extremely questionable to say the least.
As an agent, my issue here would be…The Atlantic Monthly isn’t just Jill Greenberg’s client, it was (and hopefully will continue to be) Vaughan Hannigan’s client. And for any photographer to so willfully ignore these ties and sabotage all these relationships is beyond me.
Any agency worth their salt would have dropped Jill Greenberg in a second. As an agent, you ideally talk to your photographers often, and especially before an assignment. You would hope that there is a decent level of trust that goes both ways. I can’t even imagine the conversation they had after this all went down.
Lastly…a monkey pooping on John McCain’s head? That’s some low rent shit.
Filed in: Talent, Photo Agency, Editorial, Advice.
i guess VH agrees with you. jill greenberg is back with her former agent at art mix.
the worst was the fact she did her possible photoshop job on these ones… so its not like they have much merit… If she wanted to be artistic she should had taken stock images and use those.
Jill was not dropped by VH, she left on her own accord. Jill also dropped August as her syndication.
My take is that any defense of her actions ignores our industry’s best practices. All in all it was childish at best - destructive as worst.
I read that Jill left VH and Art Mix decided to represent her again. Either way, it’d be hard to trust her on any level after all this I think. Magazines, agents, even ad agencies…would you entrust a six figure shoot in her hands after what she did? What if she doesn’t like your product? After the 1 year usage expires and she decides to trash, say the Hummer campaign she just shot? Ridiculous? Not after this.
I think her work is hideous at best. If I were an agent, I’d find it really difficult to sell anything that bad, so I probably would have dropped her a long time ago.
Oh yeah, and her professionalism sucks too.