photo by Jill Greenberg

When Jill Greenberg told Photo District News how she was able to snap unflattering photos of presidential candidate John McCain during a cover photo shoot for the Atlantic magazine, debate erupted over the freelance photographer’s behavior. Greenberg snapped a strobe-lit image of McCain from a low angle, so the senator looks spooky and menacing. Greenberg, who is known as the “Manipulator,” posted the photo and edited copies on her Web site. (An archive of all the photos is available here.)

More than a week later questions remain: How much vetting a publication should do before hiring a freelance photographer? Can a freelance photographer be outwardly political, or should they hew to the reporter’s standards of appearing unbiased? What is journalism and what is art? Can journalism also be artistic?

Like any good ethical dilemma, there are few easy answers with the Greenberg case.

The response to Greenberg’s photos of McCain came fast and furious. The author of the accompanying Atlantic story on McCain, Jeffrey Goldberg, said Greenberg “is quite obviously an indecent person who should not be working in magazine journalism.” The magazine apologized to McCain, and editor James Bennet said on Fox News that the magazine wouldn’t pay Greenberg for her work, and was considering a lawsuit. No additional details about a potential suit are known since Bennet spoke last week

.Jill Greenberg has given few interviews since she took the original unflattering photo, and she declined Pop + Politics’ request. In her first interview with Photo District News she said McCain’s staff members were “not very sophisticated” because they missed how she was lighting McCain with a strobe light that created threatening shadows.

Perhaps this could have been circumvented by researching Greenberg more thoroughly. She is after all, the photographer who notoriously made babies cry for her infamous “End Times” shoot, a collection of photos designed to express her frustration with the Bush administration.

Greg Garry, the photo editor at Radar magazine, where Greenberg has done numerous assignments, told Pop + Politics it’s good to invest time when looking for potential hires. “Generally I do research photographers I like, silently stalking them on the Internet, keeping up with their latest work, introducing myself. Then I hire them once I have the perfect job, tailored to their talents.

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James Bennet told Fox News the magazine looks at each photographer’s “professional track record,” and Greenberg has taken many photos in her signature polished, Photoshopped style, including some of other Republicans. Bennet also said the magazine doesn’t “vet our photographers for their politics.”

“This photographer had worked for everybody from Phillip Morris to Time magazine to Portfolio magazine. She had a long record and no history of doing anything like what she has done here,” Bennet said.

Greenberg believes the Atlantic should have investigated her more thoroughly. “I am a pretty hard-core Democrat,” she told Photo District News. “Some of my artwork has been pretty anti-Bush, so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for [the magazine] to hire me.”

The National Press Photographers Association’s ethics and standards chair likewise told the organization’s Web site that stricter scrutiny is OK. “Atlantic Monthly did not vet their choice of photographer well enough…” John Long said.

Garry, in a post at Radar Online, found no fault with Greenberg’s photos. “Granted, she might’ve come off a tad aggressive and might’ve screwed the pooch with the Atlantic, but sweet Jesus, where the hell is everyone’s sense of humor?” Garry wrote. “These altered photos are really just political cartoons, and pretty damned funny.”

The photo editor of the Village Voice agreed. “The manipulated McCain ‘out-takes’ that appeared on Greenberg’s Web site were outrageous and crude,” Staci Schwartz told Pop + Politics. “I love them to death.” But she said the pertinent question was if Greenberg could run the photos in the first place. “Whether or not they defy the terms of her contract with the Atlantic is another story.”

Did Greenberg have a right to publish the photos on her site?

Schwartz said obtaining a photo embargo is key, and there’s general agreement the Atlantic should have required a longer one. “If I assign a photographer to shoot a portrait of a high-profile celebrity or public figure, we have them sign a contract that includes an embargo that constrains the photographer from reselling any of the outtakes for a certain period of time,” she said.

Greenberg secured just a two-week embargo from publishing the photos From the Atlantic, in the hopes of selling the images from the shoot (including the strobe-light shot) to another media outlet, according to Photo District News.

Robert Green, Greenberg’s husband and spokesperson, told Radar Online she had the right to doctor and publish the photos as she saw fit. “She delivered them the photo that they asked her to deliver,” he said. “What she does with the rest of the photos is her business.”

But working with a source or a publication means more than just following the letter of the contract, and this is where most of the criticisms with Greenberg lie. Photographer Mark Tucker, who also shoots commercial and portrait photography like Greenberg, drew conclusions from the Greenberg/McCain/Atlantic debate in the form of 10 rules to follow. A couple of highlights: “On a commission job, don’t screw the Subject, unless the Client is in on it … You don’t pee in the pool … Don’t screw your client either.” McCain trusted Greenberg was going to represent him fairly, and Tucker suggests Greenberg’s violation of this trust was unfair to both McCain and other photographers.

NPPA ethics and standards chair John Long said Greenberg wasn’t acting with integrity. “Journalism is based on credibility and honesty, and if someone is acting like a journalist (even if his or her primary role is as an artist or portraitist), the photographer’s word must be sacrosanct. To lie is to violate the sense of trust that journalism is founded upon. This act damages all journalists who value their credibility. We all have political opinions but we can’t use subterfuge to advance our political goals when we’re representing ourselves as objective journalists. This conduct is diametrically opposed to NPPA’s Code of Ethics.”

And now we have a discussion of semantics, because Robert Green said his wife isn’t a journalist. “She’s an artist who is expressing herself through the medium she expresses herself through.”

Will Greenberg’s actions have a type of chilling effect on other famous subjects, who will be more wary of sitting for photo shoots? Will Greenberg have fewer subjects sitting for her? It’s likely the market will be our answer. Soon after the story broke, Greenberg left her agency and returned to her former representation at ArtMix. And for every person who shies away from Greenberg now, there’s another who will think she has increased her cache.

But John McCain probably isn’t hiring her to take photos for his new campaign buttons.