JILL GREENBERG

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URSINE

In Jill Greenberg's “Ursine” series, actor bears put on a show for her camera and gnash their teeth at Greenberg’s critics. "They are all “working bears.” They’re animal actors. I have to go to Calgary where there are these “close contact” bears—Kodiak bears and black bears. I set up a studio outside. I also did the same thing in Vancouver when I found a working polar bear. [...] What’s interesting about the bears is that they’re trained to stand up and growl and look really scary and menacing, but when they’re doing it they’re totally silent. They’re just silently acting like scary grizzly bears. When I was shooting the bears, I was surprised that they’d often pose like cuddly teddy bears. I thought that was really cute and I liked the dichotomy between the two ways the bears could be. Their faces are so mushy. They can look like a growling bear at one moment and then a cuddly bear a moment later. Just like the monkeys and the apes, the bears are trained to work for food." -Jill Greenberg