The professional suicide of a photographer

As a photojournalist, I photographed every political leader, both on the federal and provincial scenes. 4 parties in Canada, 4 in Quebec, that mean 6 of them where not my guy/girl. But each time, I did my job the best I could, putting aside my political view.

Apparently, not everyone do the same. Jill Greenberg is a top photographer, working with major US publication. How many of us can say they had 15 minutes with US presidential candidate John McCain?

On assignment for Atlantic magazine, she was on assignment for the cover. Interviewed in PDN magazine, Greenberg tells how she feels about McCain and how she duped him.

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.

And she added insult to injury by putting amongst others those pictures in rotation as a splash screen of her website.

Now, tell me how someone will trust her to take a photo of them? And which magazine will trust her for a job?

I think she somewhat sums it up:

so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for them [The Atlantic] to hire me.