MANIPULATOR
For 15 years, Jill Greenberg’s website was called manipulator.com. She had borrowed the name “Manipulator” from the 80’s German large format culture magazine, “The Manipulator”. It was one of the many pop culture influences along with “The Face”, “Interview”, and “W” which wallpapered her bedroom walls in high school. Greenberg has been manipulating her images manually as well as digitally since 1983 and 1990, respectively. Recently she decided to switch to a jillgreenberg.com url since 95% of her work is achieved with lighting, in camera.
Since the age of 10, Jill Greenberg has staged photographs and created characters using the mediums of drawing,
painting, sculpture, film and photography. She is known worldwide for her uniquely human animal portraits which intentionally anthropomorphize her subjects, as well as her infamous series, “End Times” which struck a nerve in its exploration of religious, political, and environmental themes exploiting the raw emotion of toddlers in distress. Her newest work marks a return to the postmodern feminist theory that inspired her senior thesis, “The Female Object” as an art student at RISD in the 80’s: “The disciplinary project of femininity” and the predetermined failure of all women who attempt to “succeed” at it.
As a working photographer she travails to straddle the line between assignment work and her own personal work. On one notable occasion, a conflict arose when she was assigned to photograph the Republican candidate for presidency in the summer 2008, at the height of his popularity : after delivering the assignment exactly as requested, she chose to speak out in the form of agit prop outtakes on her own website, which she was legally allowed and morally compelled to do. The violent backlash from her political art has informed this return to the question of what is tolerated by women in our culture.
These subjects are explored in “Glass Ceiling” as well as “Horses”.
JILL GREENBERG
Jill Greenberg was born in Montreal, Canada in 1967. At the age of 2, her family moved to Michigan where Greenberg began her arts education. In 5th grade, while attending Cranbrook’s elementary school, she developed and printed black and white photographs and animated with stop-motion video, as well as drawing, painting and sculpting. Constant extra-curricular courses supplemented her arts education: Kingswood, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Association, and the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit. Before senior year in High School, she enrolled in Rhode Island School of Design’s pre-college program in Illustration 1984. Senior year, she was the recipient of the Traub Scholarship for Art from Andover High School, which afforded her the opportunity to attend Parsons in Paris for Photography the summer before art school.
She earned a BFA with honors, RISD ‘89 Photo with a senior thesis called “The Female Object”; took a class at Brown University, in Semiotics. After graduation, Greenberg moved to New York City. Interned at Pace MacGill, and enrolled in continuing education classes at School of Visual Arts: Studio Art, Contemporary Art History, Photoshop 1.0 in 1991.
Then, after almost-but not quite- getting into the Whitney Program’s Independent Study art program in 1992, she opted to focus primarily on assignment work until 2001, when the “Monkey Portraits*” series began.
AWARDS
2011 American Photographic Artists award winner. Second Place in Fine Art category
2010 AP26 American Photography “Glenn Beck” for GQ, and Dog for O Magazine
2010 PDN PIX Digital Imaging “Glass Ceiling” series
2009 PDN PIX Digital Imaging x 3
2009 AP25 American Photography
2009 Society for Publication Designers x4
2008 New York Photo Award, Advertising
2008 Society for Publication Designers
2007 Society of Publication Designers- Silver Medal
2007 AP23 American Photography
2006 Award of Excellence, Communications Arts
2006 Print Placement – 2nd Place, PDN/Nikon
2006 Direct Mail Award – 1st Place, PDN/Nikon
2005 _Special Book– 2nd Place, PDN/Nikon
Self Promotion
2004 Self-Promo Award– 2nd Place, PDN/Nikon
1997 Communications Arts
Selected Public Collections
The Kemper Museum, Kansas City, Missouri
National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC
Southeast Museum of Photography,
Daytona Beach, Florida
The West Collection, Oaks, Pennsylvania
Sprint Nextel Corporation, Overland Park, Kansas
Franlkin Company Collections, Los Angeles
L, G, & F Advertising, Brussels, Belgium
Kevin Thomas Films
ParVest Asset Management