Jill Greenberg’s Pictorial Works are a selection of iconic photographs taken by the artist between 2001 and 2011. The collection includes works from her most renowned series including: Ursine, Horse, End Times, Glass Ceiling and Monkey Portraits. The works reflects Greenberg’s ability to capture emotion through highly detailed portraits of animals, children and swim athletes.
End Times, Monkey Portraits, Ursine series were all photographed using analogue with film. The negatives were drum scanned, then the high res files were digitally hand-painted with a stylus and a tablet which lends them a painterly appearance. Processed digitally, the images become hyper-realistic depictions of characters and scenes. These portraits are illuminated with ‘light painting’, which adds dimensions and creates a sculptural, three dimensional feeling to the two dimensional works. The works touch upon themes including emotions, politics, the staged image, the manipulated image, animals, as well as, the female experience and feminism. Greenberg uses languages of colour, light and animal symbolism to work with these themes. Through her work more broadly, Greenberg explores the power dynamics between viewer and subject, humans and animals.
Greenberg has released four monographs of her work published by Little, Brown of her Monkey Portraits and Bear Portraits. The Horses series has been published by Rizzoli in 2012, and the End Times series by TF Editores and DAP Publishes in 2013.
