Mag Photographer's Grotesque McCain Trick
The Atlantic has said it didn't vet Jill Greenberg's politics before hiring her to shoot John McCain. Even if it had known about her controversial anti-George Bush photographs, it wouldn't have cared, as a matter of policy. The policy may soon change: Greenberg is gloating she left McCain's eyes bloodshot and skin gnarly for the Atlantic's October cover. Worse, from the magazine's perspective, is that she tricked the Republican presidential nominee into standing over an unflattering strobe light, then posted the worst shots and Photoshops to her personal site:
(There's also one of a monkey shitting on McCain's head, in case you want the full, appetite-robbing effect.)
The Atlantic said Greenberg "disgraced herself" and that it assumed she would act more professionally. The writer of the cover story called it "juvenile."
Greenberg, meanwhile, told PDNPulse it was "irresponsible" of the Atlantic to hire her in the first place for "heroic" shots of McCain, given her well-known anti-Bush photography. And she gloated over how she tricked McCain:
Greenberg asked McCain to “please come over here” for one more set-up before the 15-minute shoot was over. There, she had a beauty dish with a modeling light set up. “That’s what he thought he was being lit by,” Greenberg says. “But that wasn’t firing.”
What was firing was a strobe positioned below him, which cast the horror movie shadows across his face and on the wall right behind him. “He had no idea he was being lit from below,” Greenberg says. And his handlers didn’t seem to notice it either. “I guess they’re not very sophisticated,” she adds.
The photographer would like to sell her more provocative photos to another magazine.
So, counting NBC/MSNBC, this makes at least two news organizations whose contributors have been bitterly divided over political and ethical issues around the 2008 election. Who will be the third?
