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Amazing (and Controversial) Photographs
**BE WARNED: These images are of young children crying. They were not injured and are safe in a studio with their parents nearby. If these kinds of images disturb you, you will not want to view the link below**
'End Times' photo exhibition by Jill Greenberg
I came across these photographs today and they are amazing. On her website, the photographer says that "the honesty of a child's feelings is undeniable and it draws you into the photograph. Perhaps because kids express the kind of powerful emotions that we, as adults, have suppressed in ourselves."
Personally, I view many, many photographs. I am a photographer myself and these images are the kind that I can only dream of creating. They are beautiful, raw, and very important. It's not often that I am amazed at how moving a photograph can be. These are different than most and they stand out.
Yet the photographer has been called a child abuser. She's been likened to Hitler. It's been claimed that these images are, as one blogger claims, worse than child pornography. Why? Parents brought their children to the studio, the kids were given a lollipop and then it was taken away. That's all. I can guarantee that the child forgot about it within minutes. If you've spent anytime with kids this age, you'll know how quickly they will throw a fit, then recover. "Taking candy from a baby" is NOT child abuse.
I guess what it comes down to is this: would you take your child to this photographer, knowing that these were the images she would be creating? I can tell you without pause that I would. A child's momentary tears are a small price to pay for these important images.
View them and you decide...
'End Times' photo exhibition by Jill Greenberg
I came across these photographs today and they are amazing. On her website, the photographer says that "the honesty of a child's feelings is undeniable and it draws you into the photograph. Perhaps because kids express the kind of powerful emotions that we, as adults, have suppressed in ourselves."
Personally, I view many, many photographs. I am a photographer myself and these images are the kind that I can only dream of creating. They are beautiful, raw, and very important. It's not often that I am amazed at how moving a photograph can be. These are different than most and they stand out.
Yet the photographer has been called a child abuser. She's been likened to Hitler. It's been claimed that these images are, as one blogger claims, worse than child pornography. Why? Parents brought their children to the studio, the kids were given a lollipop and then it was taken away. That's all. I can guarantee that the child forgot about it within minutes. If you've spent anytime with kids this age, you'll know how quickly they will throw a fit, then recover. "Taking candy from a baby" is NOT child abuse.
I guess what it comes down to is this: would you take your child to this photographer, knowing that these were the images she would be creating? I can tell you without pause that I would. A child's momentary tears are a small price to pay for these important images.
View them and you decide...
Comments
and how revitalizing it would be if i was able to show exactly how i feel now...the heartache, the screaming, the anger...
plus in the photos, i love the eyes in every single picture. the eyes tell so much in these photographs...i can feel the need, the want, for something from the shine in their eyes...
don't we get the same look in our eyes when we want something so badly?
and about the nakedness...i think it really captures the "birth" of an emotion. we were all once children, we came out of the womb with nothing but our skins, and with that our raw emotions. this is where it all begins.....
i cannot believe some people have compared this photographer to Hitler! Hitler has nothing to do with this...seriously, it's so ironic...it's like adults sinking on the level of childish name-calling! does stealing candy from a baby have anything to do with Hitler's persecution of the jews, the slavs, the homosexuals...and starving them in his concentration camps? i just don't see the connection.
if they want something controversial, there's this photographer (i forgot his name), but he dresses his models up as if they had been murdered......
Also the people who are so upset about these images, most of them will still hand their screaming and terrified infant to a guy dressed like Santa, and then duck behind the photographer. That confuses me even more because what do you get out of it? The picture is barely worth keeping!
Also when you consider photojournalists who take pictures of children screaming and crying because unimaginably horrible stuff has happened to them... I don't know how they can find the strength to take the photo, but those images are very, very important. And they make change happen when people see them!
here's something that's constructive for them to do.. worry about children in real child pornography.. lobby against children being exploited the sex trade.. and most of all.. think about the millions of children who are orphans... don't have 3 sufficient meals to eat.. and are burdened with disease.. i find it laughable that they make a big deal over something so insignificant and yet be ignorant of the children who are truly suffering.. who's more sickening now?
worst kind of crying i could ever possibly experience