LOS ANGELES—Los Angeles photographer Jill Greenberg has shut down her studio and hired personal security after posting manipulated images of the Republican presidential candidate John McCain on the Internet, reports Artnet.

Greenberg, a successful commercial photographer and artist who is represented by Clampart in New York and Fahey/Klein in Los Angeles, was hired to shoot a portrait of McCain for Atlantic Monthly's October 2008 issue. In addition to a conventional portrait, which appears on the cover, the self-proclaimed "hardcore democrat" also adjusted lighting and took an unflattering, low-angle shot of the senator that casts a "horror-movie shadow" behind him, according to Artnet.

Greenberg, who retains copyright to her images, then doctored several images from the 15-minute shoot. In one, she's given him shark fangs and a bloody mouth and added the text "I am a bloodthirsty warmonger." In another, she's added a lipstick smear and the text "It was really fun to cheat on my car-injury disabled first wife" to an otherwise more innocuous photo. In a third, a chimpanzee defecates on McCain's head.

The photographer removed the images from her Web site after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the Atlantic. She has received multiple death threats, and Jeffrey Goldberg, the so-called "liberal hawk" who wrote the cover story, has denounced her on theatlantic.com, calling her "an indecent person who should not be working in magazine journalism" and "deranged." She has also been dropped by the Vaughan Hannigan photo agency, but picked up by Artmix, which describes her in its press release as a "Maverick. Visionary. Provocateur. Manipulator. Artist."