Are these fake animals? Fake monkeys? The press release doesn’t exactly say no. Instead, it snootily suggests “each subject is a celebrity in his own right” and then namedrops The Tonight Show. Monkey Portraits is as satisfying as checking out naked chicks for the first time in last month’s Playboy. It’s suitable for fetishists of, like, 94% real, which is all Blade Runner-creepy.

Greenberg was a celeb photog for Time, so it makes sense. She used her connections to book well-behaved celeb-monkeys (I swear to hanuman I want to type "monkies"), most of whom predictably reside in Miami, but none of them starred in Project X and I really wanted a reunion with Goliath. Most days my brain feels like it got secretly shocked by radiation from watching Fox News, and all I want is a fucking cigarette before it gets worse.

It’s like goddamn, because monkeys are so easily entertaining and fascinating. They don’t call for “cute” and “enlightening” captions like “Undecided.” Shit’s for parents and overly reflective patrons of art galleries, same difference.

My disappointment with this book reminds me of when I was in 2nd grade and the assistant teacher Mrs. Gooch – she had red fingernails like a ghetto witch working a cauldron 24-7 and skin like Morgan Freeman – was somehow put in charge of show-and-tell day. Being a straight-B kid, I brought an $80 three-pound heavily-illustrated book containing every animal in the universe. It was as if Audubon had been on the Arc on speed.

Flashback:

Me: My aunt gave me this for Christmas and it has…

Mrs Gooch: Oh, we’ve already seen that. Sally, you’re next.

Me: [flipping it open] No, this has every…

Mrs Gooch: Another one of those books. We’ve already seen it…

[Mrs. Gooch brings a fingernail up to scratch her nose and brushes me aside with her other claw. I walk back to my desk, forever scarred.]

Sally: This is a deck of my Dad’s playing cards my parents got in Las Vegas…

Mrs Gooch: Ooh, look at those, they so shiny.

Next to cats, photos of monkeys are hard to fuck up. Damn, lady.

This discourse of Jill Greenberg’s Monkey Portraits is written by Brianna Shore for ignore Magazine, copyright 2007.