BEAR PORTRAITS / Review

A top celebrity portrait photographer, Jill Greenberg has a unique ability to coax powerful emotions out of her subjects – whether human or animal. Her portraits of bears, collected here for the first
time, surprise and engage. We encounter cubs as cute as a child’s Teddy, grizzlies that look like they might swallow you whole, and Polar bears seated in Sphinx-like tranquility.

Full-grown brown bears, grizzlies, black bears, Polar bears, and bear cubs are photographed on location against a portrait backdrop. The poses and facial expressions are at turns oddly comedic, pensive, terrifying, and sometimes unexpectedly human. Alive with Greenberg’s signature lighting and seen through the unique perspective of her lens, these startling bear portraits bring us face to face with our fears and fantasies.

Jill Greenberg regularly shoots advertising and celebrity portrait photography for such clients as Dreamworks, Sony Pictures, Epson, Entertainment Weekly, and GQ.  She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design.  Her photographs of monkeys, dogs, lemurs and – of course – bears were the face of a large-scale Animal Planet ad campaign featured on television aand billboards and in New York City subway cars. Jill resides in Los Angeles with her husband, Robert, and two children.