Primate Portraits

Portrait photographer Jill Greenberg has a successful career shooting celebrities such as Tom Cruise and Clint Eastwood for the likes of Entertainment Weekly, Maxim, Vanity Fair, and Time. In 2001, the Montreal-born Greenberg was photographing a children’s furniture commercial, using two children and, for comic relief, a trained monkey clanging away on pots and pans. Halfway into the session, Greenberg decided to snap straight portraits of the monkey. “Once I saw the film,” she explains from her studio in Los Angeles, “it was a really powerful portrait of this animal. There was this pensive, hesitant, serious quality.” Greenberg was smitten. She began renting every variety of trained primate available (“they really stink up the place”) and photographing them as if they were A-list Hollywood stars. Each animal shown here is a “professional actor,” complete with resumé of film and commercial work, and, of course, plenty of attitude.
1 comment(s)

Eileenn AlbaApril 04, 2011 10:56 EST

Hello, I am volunteering to do a study on one type of primate for an anthropology class that I am taking at Pierce College in West Hills, Ca. My first thought was the Silver Back Gorrilla. I love them! Then, I turned on the TV today to watch a documentary on animals in the Arctic and I saw several walrus's (I think that's right). I realized that I don't know anything about them. I googled 'is the walrus a primate' and this site came up, but no information or pictures. I would appreciate hearing from you. Your life sounds so interesting. I'm a single 52 yr old woman, trying to figure out what I what to do for the rest of my life. I'm crazy about animals. I think I'm too old to work with them. What you do sounds interesting.

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