The story behind this photo

Jill Greenberg: The crying of children.

Jill Greenberg is a Canadian photographer who lives in Los Angeles, USA. She has shot many fashion works, including the covers of Time and Rolling Stone. In 2006, she took a series of portraits called End Times, which became a hot topic in that year. The content of the work is all crying children, crying naked in front of the camera, so that people who see the work can not help but be moved.

Jill Greenberg told a group of children (including her own and friends' children) to take off their clothes, put them in front of the camera and give them lollipops. Just as the children were having fun, the photographer suddenly took away their lollipops! That's why the children in the camera are crying so sadly. Children don't keep their feelings, they fight in the only way they know.

Adults become more and more numb with age, but the reason why we are moved by seeing such photos may be because we suppress such feelings in our hearts.

At that time, after this group of photos was exhibited, some people strongly criticized Jill Greenberg, saying that in order to achieve the shooting effect, she did not hesitate to hurt children and show their injured side, and said that this practice violated professional ethics. If we put this group of works in the category of art, there is still something to appreciate. As for the professional ethics of photographers, different people have different views.

Jill Greenberg described her group of works like this: "I didn't do any harm to these children. As a mother, I know very well that children cry easily. This reminds me of the current political environment. After George W. Bush was re-elected, I felt helpless and angry. The American people have to pay the price for the unjust Iraq war. Originally, I wanted to name the work "There are still four years". Of course, human beings have always been greedy, violent and dishonest. The most serious thing is not the Iraq war, but that people influence ecological evolution, prevent medical research and ignore environmental pollution. It seems that this era is coming to an end. And children have to bear these mistakes innocently. Isn't the pain written on these children's faces a portrayal of some future? "