Artist Statement

By Jill Greenberg, 2005

Nothing is more pure than the anguish of a child. Pictures of children crying capture raw emotion: sputtering rage and profound loss. In many ways, we've become desensitized to disturbing images. But the honesty of a child's feelings is undeniable, and it draws you into the photograph. Perhaps because kids experience the kind of powerful emotions that we, as adults, have suppressed in ourselves.

 The children I photographed were not harmed in any way. And, as a mother, I am quite aware of how easily toddlers can cry. Storms of grief sweep across their features without warning; a joyful smile can dissolve into a grimace of despair. The first little boy I shot, Liam, suddenly became hysterically upset. It reminded me of the helplessness and anger I feel about our current political and social situation. It made me think of my outrage at our false reasons for going to war in Iraq and the scandalous way in which the conflict was sold to the American people. I thought of George W. Bush, then just sworn into his second term in office, and I decided to call the image "Four More Years."

As any new parent will tell you, the future suddenly becomes a very serious concern. As ecstatic as I was at the birth of my daughter, I felt selfish bringing her, and later my son into our screwed-up world. I seemed to become a mother at exactly the moment things went awry. Of course, human beings have always been greedy, violent, and dishonest. But the rise of the Christian right as a political force in this country has made the situation dire. The most dangerous fundamentalists aren't just waging war in Iraq; they're attacking evolution, blocking medical research, and ignoring the environment. It's as if they believe the apocalyptic End Time is near, therefore, protecting the earth and the future of all our children is futile. As a parent, I have to reckon with the knowledge that our children will suffer for the mistakes our government is making. Their pain is a precursor of what is to come.

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End Times: Epilogue
By Jill Greenberg, 2012

When I set out to create my series of crying children in 2005, I had no idea that it would cause such a stir in both the photography and cultural community at large, or that the images would be so widely appropriated for causes significantly at odds with my original intent.

Each image in the series, which I entitled “End Times”, was created by eliciting a child’s hyperbolic reaction to extremely minimal provocation. In many cases, the very young subjects (children ages 2 to 4) required no provocation at all, and were simply agitated by the act of being photographed. The reasons for their distress were common to those of any child: having something taken away. As any parent knows, rarely does a toddler sobbing convey any real pain or mental anguish. At that age, crying it is one of the main methods of communication, and in this particular instance, a short tantrum provoked by gentle manipulation. Indeed, I found the circular logic at play a striking paradox. The children’s worlds were not ending by having a lollipop taken away, but if only they had the capacity to understand what was happening to their world—to the environment—as a result of the backwards, conservative leadership in the White House in 2005, when the photographs were made, they would undoubtedly be distressed.

Before the exhibition in April, 2006, “End Times” was exhibited in a solo booth at the Scope art fair in New York. There, the work elicited no controversy. A few weeks later, a pseudonymous photo blogger—a banker by day—discovered the work online and wrote that I should be “arrested and charged with child abuse” for my techniques, an all-out polemic ensued. When American Photo magazine cited the blogger and called the work, “the most controversial photo series of the year” in their April 2006 print edition, the volume of online comments in response crashed their server. I was interviewed by BBC TV, Inside Edition, Good Morning America; was covered in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, and El Pais in Spain among others. The London Sunday Times magazine ran a six-page cover story called “The Great Lollipop Debate,” referring to one of the methods for making the children cry (the childrens' mothers or my photo assistants requesting the lollipops back.) While I had very much intended for my art to be provocative, I had no sense of the hornet’s nest into which I was poking a sharp stick.

 Nevertheless the work itself garnered awards and was acquired by significant private collectors. “End Times” has been exhibited in solo shows in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Adelaide, Australia, and in group shows at such venues as Brown University, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto, Boston University, and Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (curated by Paul Wombell).

Because of the influx of attention, the images have been widely published and have served as a sort of visual accompaniment to a host of causes, institutions and businesses wishing to play on the sympathy evoked by an image of a child in distress. I don’t license my fine art work for advertising, and very very rarely for editorial or web use, but the images became a sort of visual meme and were stolen and used rampantly without my or the models’ guardians’ consent. To date, the images have been used in anti-child abuse campaigns, political campaigns for the far right in Switzerland and the communist party in Estonia, and for advertisements for phone applications and life insurance, as well as for countless Facebook and Twitter avatars.

If asked, I would never have allowed for the images to be used for any intent and purpose other than that of my own. But I am seldom asked. Blogs dedicated to deconstructing “The Jill Greenberg effect”—my lighting and retouching techniques from the series—continue to pop up in such disparate languages as Arabic and German, and I’ve been told that photography students worldwide are being assigned to reproduce the images as part of their coursework.

The photographs have a life of their own now. I created them, and, like children, have ambivalently let them out into the world.