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June 28, 2006
It's art, stupid
Jill Greenspun, an exploitave photographer - sorry 'artist', is threatening the livelihood of photographer Thomas Hawk who criticised her through his own private blog
In short Thomas Hawk sees Jill Greenbergs work as abusive to children.
From what I can gather Jill photographs kids in order to highlight her own (and presumably our) feelings about George Bush and the second Iraq war.
The kids she photographs go through a little bit of attitude adjustment before Jill starts snapping. Apparently she first strips them of clothing* and then offers them a lollipop only to snatch it away from them when they become sufficiently attached. This of course starts anything from immediate tears to a full-on temper tantrum.
The removal of the lollipop is marginal - what makes this, for me, so abhorrent is the fact that she then continues to goad the child by not allowing his parents to comfort the child, parent who, by the way, are standing by 'monitoring' all of this...
Of course the child gets very distressed and this is the moment that Jill chooses to strike.
In the legitamate criticism that has followed, Jill and her cronies attempt to shield themselves from reproach by explaining that all this is done in the name of art. Further, Jill's husband claims that this 'technique' is used to upset children all the time for films, photo shoots in the advertising industry etc. Which kind of undermines the whole 'its just art, stupid' claims - they are just a bunch of money grubbing cynics after all.
This is wrong on so many levels. For a start, anything that is classed as art is open to criticism, good, bad, constructive, dammning or otherwise - art is a two-edged blade. Second, what about the children? They have no choice in all of this. Who knows what kind of freak gets his kicks from seeing upset children - you could just as easily argue that they are facilitating niche pornography as you could argue that the images are 'art'. NOt that I think for a minute that there is an iota of an intention to objectify these children - sexually that is...
The bottom line is that exploiting children is just plain wrong - portraits are one thing, but what Jill is doing is fundamentally different.
Even worse is that fact that Jill and her husband, and presumably any supporters she has, have started contacting Thomas' employers in an attempt to get him sacked, claiming he is mentally unbalanced, with severe emotional problems and that he doesnt know anything about children (Thomas has four children).
They have even threatened libel proceedings and thrown in reference to U.S. first amendment rights, conveniently overlooking the fact that their attack on response to Thomas is an attempt to infringe his First amendment rights.
Think about that for a minute - because these people don't like the criticism levelled at them, they want the critic to shut up and are apparently stopping at nothing to make that happen.
To try and throw some light relief (or maybe heavy sarcasm) on the whole affair I have some suggestions for some 'art' that can be photographed and hung on walls
- punch old people - to highlight the helplessness and lonliness of old people in our society
- burn homeless peoples cardboard box shelters - to highlight the division between the rich and the poor
- loot, pillage and rape an entire rural village - to highlight the co-opting of rural communities by commuting urbanites
Best of all, its all worth it no matter what the cost because someone, somewhere will be touched by what you do and understand the world a little bit better - just like you do.
* note: the images are not sexual in any way
Posted by dottie at June 28, 2006 1:52 PM