Product Description

We share about 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees, our closest biological cousins. And never have the similarities between simians and humans been so amusingly and brilliantly captured as in Monkey Portraits by celebrity photographer Jill Greenberg.Jill has spent 15 years photographing everyone from Kelly Osbourne to Clint Eastwood, but has recently focused on photographing stars of a different sort. She has been photographing monkeys and apes, many of whom have appeared on movies or in television shows. Her intimate portraits of these animals convey a startling range of emotions and personalities. They convey the same wit and expressiveness that have made William Wegman's dogs so endearing. Each of these 76 amazing photographs of monkeys and apes will remind you of someone you know. These pictures will make you laugh out loud and wonder just how different we truly are.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #324974 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 112 pages

About the Author
Jill Greenberg works regularly for clients like Dreamworks, Sony Pictures, HBO, Bacardi, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Time and Newsweek. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and began her career in New York. She lives in L.A. with her hus

Customer Reviews

Monkey Portraits
This is a great book full of...monkey portraits. Most of the monkeys have been used in various films and commercials and their credits are noted in the back of the book. The style of photography is pretty unique, almost as if it is rendered in paint or another media and it is wonderful to see the expressive faces of these beautiful creatures. There are some wonderful natural poses, where the artist has captured the personality of the monkey, and others (where the monkey has been trained to) where the subject is posing for the picture. Although these are less satisfying than the natural poses, they are still full of charm. Animal rights campaigners will worry about using animals is studios like this for art, rather than taking shots in the wild. I tend to agree natural, wild shots are more satisfying to view, but that doesn't take away from some wonderful photography and animal portraiture in this book. Worth a look if you're interested in primates and have many other books on the topic.

Superb
Phenomenal glossy and emotional portraits of our cousins.The heavy retouching (which is part of Greenberg's signature) does sometimes get in the way.

monkey and ape portraits from the PG tips view of respect for animals
This is quite a good book and has some excellent images in it. However, the overall tone is let down by some "comic" portraits which show an overall lack of respect for the animals. I suppose it is just quite american in this approach, but it left me feeling somewhat uncomfortable. It's like watching the old PG tips adverts with performing chimpanzees - the animals perform humanised tricks to look cute rather than express their own characters. Most of us have moved on from that...

If you love animals, then buy James & Other Apes. Like Greenberg, James Mollison does interesting portraits of apes. They both list the animals' histories, but instead of hollywood films, Mollison's apes have real histories of welfare rescues and academic language research. His work brings a noble "humanity" to the apes and gave me a real desire to read more about the work to give apes more legal protection based on their intelligence and similarity to us.

If you want beautiful portraits of apes, buy James & Other Apes
But if you just want to laugh at some funny photos, buy Monkey Portraits