Taking more than candy?

Greenberg is primarily a commercial photographer and has done work for magazines, including Time, Rolling Stone and The Times' Sunday magazine, West. Her first exhibit at the Kopeikin Gallery was 2004's "Monkey Portraits," in which monkeys posed similarly to the toddlers in "End Times," only dry-eyed. The controversy hasn't hurt her commercial career, Greenberg says; in fact, at one point Macy's inquired into buying the entire "End Times" series for use in its advertising. The 42-inch-by-50-inch prints, in editions of 10, start at $4,500 apiece.

Career aside, accusations of child abuse deeply offend Greenberg, who lives in Los Angeles. "I have a loving family, I come from a normal family, I've never done anything awful in my life," she said. "Pictures of crying children are upsetting, powerful. There is something instinctual that makes you want to protect them.... But people are taking the pictures literally, as if they are evidence of awful things happening to these kids."

It's true that things are not entirely as they seem; the images were enhanced during postproduction, Greenberg said, to make the children appear more upset than they really were. She used Photoshop to darken furrows in brows, shine tears until they glistened.

In the end, "This is more a story about blogging than about photography," said Stephen White, formerly a gallery owner and currently a private dealer and collector in Studio City. "It's about a generation that's so caught up in itself that everything it says it thinks is significant, even though it's not saying anything at all.

"People in the photography world, anyone who is sophisticated about photography, knows that this is not offensive," he said. "Taking away a lollipop is not child abuse. There's no irreparable harm. I'm just not sure there's any significance to the photographs, either."

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Contact Times staff writer Steven Barrie-Anthony at steven.barrieanthony@latimes.com.