Monkey Portraits: Jill Greenberg

Monkey Portraits
by Jill Greenberg

Nana sent us this wonderful book Monkey Portraits a few weeks ago, as a gift for Ana.

From the day we received it, Ana has formed a special bond with the book and has insisted on poring over it every night at bedtime.

The portraits are by Jill Greenberg, an accomplished photographer who became enchanted by our biological cousins and their pure emotional expression, and decided to capture them in their element. Over two dozen models are featured in this collection of portraits that show off their varying moods and personalities.

The book is beautiful, amusing, and creative at the same time. Each picture comes with a charming caption like "barfly", "curmudgeon", "pensive", "contrarian", "worried", "delirious", "heatmiser" and so on. At the back of the book, the various monkey/ape models are introduced by the names they respond to.

Initially, it was fun yet tedious to read out every caption and explain it to Ana. Then, after a few reads, it was rewarding to note that she simply started reading it back to us, clearly and correctly pointing out the caption of each picture and trying to ape the expression on the page.

Of the 70-odd pictures, each unique and featuring one of the two dozen odd primates modeling, having its own caption, Ana now pretty much knows all but 4 or 5, and reads them out back to us from memory! While we just took it for granted, it was nice to note that Nana was quite impressed and taken aback by this feat of the wee one, when she visited us recently :)




Ana claims her favorites are Lola, a Diana Monkey residing in Miami, and BamBam, a baby orangutan residing in LA. The pictures that she feels most attracted to apparently seem to be the ones of the Mandrills - Kongo and Azumah. Quite understandably. They have such attractive colors on their face... and Ana thinks they are wearing a colorful mask :)


All in all, a wonderful addition to her (our) library. Thanks, Mom!!