First off, thanks very much to my friend and fellow nashville photographer Adair Freeman for letting me in on this, as I ultimately live in a bubble and am normally informed very late on various things. For those of you that don’t know anything about this debacle, here’s some links for you to catch up with.
American Digest: “Out-takes: Behind ‘The Atlantic’s’ McCain Cover”
Response from the writer of the article
Opinion of another Nashville Photographer, Mark Tucker
For those of you that don’t want to read through all that, here’s a summary from PDN:
“Briefly: As Greenberg carried out an assignment to photograph McCain for the cover of The Atlantic, she (tricked him and)fired off a few unflattering outtakes. Then she posted them on her web site, adding some grotesque retouching and slogans ridiculing the Republican candidate. Greenberg, who reached out to PDN last week to talk about the shoot, said at the time, “I want to stir stuff up.” Did she ever!”
Ok, so with that you should be able to get the gist of the story. You’ve probably caught a couple glimpses on the various news channels over the weekend, as well. My initial reaction to this, when I was talking to Adair earlier, was the normal one I have in these situations, I called bullshit.
My first question was, did she really intend for this shot? Was it ACTUALLY pre-planned. For the artists that happen to find this blog and read through my drivel, we all know how much fame and fortune can be had from adding meaning and planning to what was initially a mistake. How many times have we “stumbled-upon” some great framing, or great technique and turned around to add a flowery artist statement to it to make it legit? This is what I saw happening.
On a photoshoot it’s pretty common occurrence to have 4 or 5 lights set up and not have one (or only one) fire. Normally this is the assistant or light-tech’s fault, when the lights are tested the responsible party is then berated, this is common practice (soap-box: respect your assistants!!!!!).
Was this a well-calculated subversive plan? or was this a lighting mistake that Greenberg chose to not correct after seeing the first frame on the back of the camera?
It’s easy to make the assumption that she saw great possibility for herself and her career in those first few frames, I mean, here I am blogging about her, as are many others across the world. I’ve never looked at her website before today, and I’ve checked it 5 times in the last few hours (I’ve even linked to it). If she was looking to add to her fame, then mark this as a success.
Here’s the thing though, my initial impression has changed. The more I read about this the more I think that this was her plan, and it’s ugly.
DISCLAIMER: I have to go ahead and let it be known that I am not a McCain supporter, at least not since 2000. I strongly support Barack Obama for president, but I want to say that regardless of Greenberg’s efforts, this isn’t about politics. I sincerely hope that her work will do nothing to sway voters in one direction or another.
What Greenberg has done and continues to do will have an impact on the entire photo industry. It is disgusting and salacious to use the trust photographers have worked on for so many years to propagate one’s own political agenda. Not only that, but present it with such poor taste, and such cheesy, and frankly, BAD photoshop work.
The most that I think any of us can do is to talk about it, let it be known that the choices Greenberg has made are based in her own selfish-dementia and in no way reflect any sort of common practice for photographers as a whole. Christ, she was bragging about it to PDN…this story is really boiling my blood.
From starting in journalism which has a fairly strict code of ethics and switching to commercial work, I’ve always wondered exactly where the ethics gray area in commercial photography stopped being gray, and I think we’ve found a prime example. She crossed the line at planning the coup, and apparently for her it was only the starting line.
I do think it’s possible to be an artist and a commercial shooter at the same time, I just think it’s going to be a lot harder now. Any art directors, editors, or media buyers out there please leave comments on this topic, let us know what you think. And everyone else for that matter, what do you feel about this? What do you think?
Thanks for bringing this to others attention. It could be used as an example of what other photographers should not do. I personally think this person needs to look up the definition of the word sophisticated.