Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me, screaming and kicking, right back in... or something like that.
I stopped blogging for awhile. I've been kinda busy, wearing I don't know, the seven or eight different hats that come along with doing a book project.
Yesterday I pissed a guy off. Personally, I think he had it coming. His basic argument was that photography deserved to be cheap, because everyone can do it and "cheap" is what the market will now bear.
Needless to say, I disagreed. Below is my response, you can see the entire exchange here on Facebook. The Photojournalist's Cooperative was created by the wonderful and amazing Yungh Kim. It hopes to promote good business practices among working freelance photographers and is well worth joining.
Yes, I can be a prick now and then.
Chris,
I must admit, I didn't actually look at your work.
After you insulted every photojournalist working today, and that's what you did when you declared that now anyone can produce top level images, then upping the ante by suggesting that we should all be happy with a token payment of $100...
I decided to insult you back.
Judging by the string of posts you've left here, and the nasty email you sent me last night (were you drunk?), I'd say I succeeded.
Now that we've got that out of the way, give me a few moments here to try and correct some of your false assumptions.
Note - I've read through the string once, I'm not going to reread it, so I'll be paraphrasing from what I remember.
1) Photographers should never use the word "take", only "make". That simple verb change alone will help you, not only when you produce your work, but when you license it.
(another one... don't use "sell" use "license".)
2) The idea of publishing work from local or native photographers, rather than airdropping a photographer that a publication has worked with in the past, and trusts is an old debate with merit on both sides. It's a different subject.
(Notice, I said worked "with" not "for".)
To argue that the photographer in Cairo, should be happy with the $100 is again, insulting. If anything, the local should be paid more. They've saved the publication airfare, hotel, a translator, a fixer... thousands of dollars, plus they probably have a better understanding of the story.
So why would you suggest they'd be happy with the modern equivalent of shinny glass beads?
3) You used terms like bourgeois and elitist as if they were somehow degrading. I don't know if you're a baseball fan, but would you spend the money to see the Red Sox play the Yankees (well over $100 I imagine, a bourgeois pursuit at this point) if they weren't the elite baseball players that they are?
Great photography is a luxury. The average person can't afford it. In the past magazines would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on every issue to produce unique content to fill their pages, attract viewers/readers, and then sell those eyeballs to their advertisers.
Kind of like the same way that you can see a $100,000,000 movie for ten bucks.
Hollywood realizes they can only get those eyeballs (or butts in the seats) by producing the best possible content, whereas the folks over on Columbus Circle have made the business decision that "good enough is good enough" and the reader will never be the wiser.
No wonder their readers have vanished (and their advertising customers with them).
If Alfred Eisenstaedt ever said he was "just one of the boys", he was being polite (unlike me, the prick that's telling you the truth). I assure you, he thought of himself as one of the best photographers in the world (if not the best), and he had the elitist digs on Martha's Vineyard to prove it.
4) There's no comparing the economic realities of having a staff job and doing freelance gigs on the side, and being 100% freelance. A staffer normally has the advantage of paid insurance, car, gear, laptop, phone, and some insider business contacts. Good for you, I've got no problem with that, just don't pretend that without those benefits you'd be happy with $100, instead of say $5,000 up front.
Also, you should realize, like a lot of former staffers who have now been thrown into the freelance pool, that by lowballing the market you're pissing in that same pool.
There's always somebody cheaper... don't be that guy.
Speaking of which, weddings I'll do them every chance I get!
I did one last year. I also lost one, to a grandson of Gamble, as in Proctor & Gamble. He felt his new niece, who wants to be a photographer, was the smarter choice.
Oh well, there's always somebody cheaper regardless of the deepness of the buyers pockets.
Finally, make-do photography may be getting cheaper, at least in the short run. Personally, I don't think it's a good business plan. It will be next to impossible for Time Magazine to regain the tens of millions of readers they've lost over the last few years, regardless of the platform it's presented on.
But your declaration that photography is now somehow better than it was in the past is completely false.
(Another often debated subject slightly removed from the topic at hand.)
You name-checked David Burnett, so I'd suggest you find a copy of the NPPA book showing the winning images from the 1980 Pictures of the Year competition (David was the Magazine Photographer of the Year then). From start to finish the images in that book in both the newspaper and magazine categories humble the award winning images of today.
Another example would be to compare Avedon's "The Family" with Nadav Kander's recent portrait series of the Obama administration. There's no comparison, although both photographers did make a tad more than $100/image for the effort.
Still, photography is subjective. There are those who will argue your side on the quality of work being produced today, and maybe that's the root of our problem.
The fact that photography is so subjective, that one editor's trash is another editor's treasure, may explain why photographers are so insecure and are willing to settle for less than they should.
Maybe that subjectivity/insecurity is the crowbar being used to rip this industry apart?
Anyway, we've covered a lot of ground. Like many artistic pursuits, I think one needs to established a solid foundation by answering questions like;
Why we go into war zones (no it's not the money).
Why we use certain words.
Why it's important to have an independent voice, err vision.
Why it's important to get properly paid.
Why it's not the equipment, but the person using it.
On that note, a blurry polaroid of Moses parting the Red Sea would trump anything Nachtwey ever produced, but the point is not to document the extraordinary, you're right anybody with any camera can do that, the point is to make extraordinary pictures of the ordinary. That's the real measure of talent.
Then, when you are a witness to the extraordinary... well, let's just say Aaron's and his Instamatic are no match for Jim.
All the best,
Ken
