Couple weeks ago I got an email from NYCphotoWorks:

Greetings Photographer,

I’m writing to you today to tell you about a new Manhattan based
company, headed by photgrapher Marc Asnin, that is working for
photographers.  NYCPhotoWorks is a company that is designed to help
photographers on all levels become better photographers, gain
professional insight and exposure, and eventually get work.  We offer
services in many different aspects of professional photography, from
consultations on personal branding to meeting face
to face with the top editors in the magazine world, to workshops taught by
working professionals.

NYCPhotoWorks will be hosting Portfolio Reviews in the fall that are
certain to provide photographers with unprecedented opportunity and insight.

On October 22nd-24th, NYCPhotoWorks will be hosting a Portfolio Review
event at the newly renovated Sandbox Studios in lower Manhattan that will
bring together more than sixty of the top photo editors in the business.
Participating publications include Time, People, Stern, Vanity Fair, Conde
Nast, Details, Forbes, ESPN, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, National
Geographic Adventurer, Redbook, and many more.  Photographers must apply
to be accepted into the event in order to ensure quality of work.  If
accepted, the photographer will be given the chance to meet with 14 photo
editors 1-on-1 over two days, plus a third day of workshops taught by the
Directors of Photography for Conde Nast Traveler, People and Redbook.
This is an unprecedented opportunity for talented photographers to
personally show their work to top photo editors and build lasting
professional relationships.

In a world as competitive and dynamic as editorial photography it’s not
enough simply to drop off or mail in your portfolio.  Meeting the editors
in person lays the foundation for a working professional relationship.
Don’t miss this chance to personally present your work to the top editors
of the magazine world.  Spots fill on a first-come-first-serve basis and
you must submit your work prior to being accepted into the event.

For more information about NYCPhotoWorks please visit our website at
www.nycphotoworks.com

Thanks for your time and please feel free to contact me with any
questions.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Is it me or do they go out of their way NOT to mention money?

So I apply and get taken to a very nice website with a lovely list of editors. Two weeks later, voila, I am accepted and get a login to register.

WHAMO!

$699-599-499-399-Just like iPods, one for every size…

I’ll do the math for you, that’s roughly $45 dollars a sitting.

Ok so you say, Robert…everyone knows it is pay to play…what is your problem? This is no different from paying for LeBook or a promo piece or portfolio pages.

Well, it is different. It is like the wheel has finally come around full circle. Really? Really?

It’s not like I am not already paying out of pocket to do editorial. You know my views on that. But now I really am paying out of pocket! Have we all forgotten folks that we used to drop portfolios off at magazines and have meetings and actually sit down in conference rooms and lobbies and show work to editors for free? This was how business was conducted, the editors need to meet you to get an idea of what you were like, they needed to see prints, they wanted to form a relationship so that you could work together. It was part of their job. Some even liked it! And if it went well, it was not some cherry pick one time assignment where because you shoot waterbuffalo on painted backdrops with a ringflash in your MFA portfolio they just knew it had to be you? But after that, via con dios…

So apart from the efficiency aspect of being able to deliver 200 (? I have no idea the size of this cattle call) culled photographers to 50 editors for example-because, we really are doing them a favour-the magazines, getting their editors all on site on two days for a blitzkreig portfolio review-they are going to come away with something don’t forget-I just don’t get it. Yes, it is highly efficient to be able to see 14 editors in two days, literally, something that would take weeks or months to do conventionally-now. But do you really have a portfolio that is suitable for Business Week, ESPN, Field and Stream, Popular Mechanics, NYTimes Style, Lucky, Prevention and Redbook? Does it make any sense? So right there, out of 32 publications represented, just how many are you really suited for? And if you respond, ‘all of them’, then I think your portfolio needs some cutting…

Sure you could spend $699 every quarter and do a very nice printed Z-fold of new work and blanket all your contacts and I know that might have zero results. But this is no different. Except for the fact that it is something that used to be free, and now, or going forward, probably will not be. File this under “blame commoditization…”

On a secondary rant, part of this has to do with the myth of “personal work.” I guess now that no one is working we all have time to do “personal work.” I’m doing it as fast as I can…have you noticed yet? Perhaps someone with a little more history in the business can corroborate this, but to my recollection, this little bit of slight of hand came up in the 90’s. It was a differentiation tactic. Pure marketing. It said, “you are not just a commercial photographer.” Well I ask you, for example, when Ad agencies are looking for a TV commercial director, and they are shopping reels, do they ask-”hey, where is the personal work? Lemme see his friends half naked at the beach?” Sounds ridiculous huh?

The situation is comparable to the rise and fall of indy cinema, first as outlier, eventually as profit center, with no investment-does this sound familiar-and now as undifferentiated from the rest.

To be “truthy” there is nothing wrong with hiring a photography to do what they do if all they do is shoot to assignment (brilliantly?). You see the perversity of the logic when in the last couple of years we have seen what I would term the “exploitation” of artists in the commercial realm, being hired to reproduce on assignment what they do for themselves. Can anyone put that logic right-side in? How is it any different from hiring an assignment photographer to reproduce what they do on assignment?

If anything, I trust the assignment photographer who has had to deal with more crises on location than the photographer hired to reproduce personal work, which by definition, is work made under the circumstances of the photographers choosing.

Can you imagine asking an Avedon, a Penn, a Meisel, etc, so, where is the personal work? Like the assignment is not good enough?

We own the means of production. We have the content. Time to stick it to the Man!

What am I talking about? A quiet revolution, the cottage revolution. The Sham Wow Revolution. Direct Marketing. Rooney. Ctein. Lavalette. Zeldin. Many many more.

Subscriptions seem to be the newest thing. The idea is give a mouse a cookie once a month and the mouse rewards you with a print. Or something like that.

I just wish I could figure out a way so that when you opened my blog a “blow-in” would fall out on your desk. Look for an announcement, just don’t hold your breath.

Dropped by the Photo Studio on Atlantic between 3rd and 4th Aves’ this afternoon and got ‘roided. Part of the project by Caroll Taveras that will eventually travel to Berlin this summer. Read about it here and here.

Definitely an odd experience on the other side of the camera. JZ is wearing her mittens but no socks folks. You’d think someone from the northeast would know to wear socks in the winter! » Read the rest of this entry «

I have always enjoyed looking at Nadav’s work. I guess it has been a while since I last tuned in but my reaction to this is pretty negative. It feels to me the most “unphotographic” that I have seen of his work, the most manipulated. Of course I understand it is all manipulated, but many of his portraits have some tone in the background which sort of softens the blend between the shadow, the person and the backdrop. What I am feeling here is bad drop-shadow 101. Photography reduced to graphic design.

Which sort of brings me to another peeve, the way that graphic design has become so intertwined with the Obama administration, for example the silly podium sign “Office of the President Elect of the United States” with the faux POTUS shield, not to mention that the office is not an “Office” at all. 

Consider also Shepard Fairey’s photo-cum-illustration of TPEOTUS:

The Obama O::

Stays Crunchy in Milk!

I’m feeling hit over the head with branding. Are there that many out of work graphic designers?

Perhaps it is commentary by Nadav to turn the administration into cut-out-dolls? If we can paper over our financial troubles by printing money perhaps we can also design our way out of crisis?

And I voted for the guy. » Read the rest of this entry «

…not by me, here.

You may recall my appreciation of Eggleston’s Democratic ways here.

We don’t exactly agree on the nature of photographic democracy but that is not too important. I think what is more important is that Jordana says;

“It didn’t give me that instant gratification I was seeking, it didn’t feel revelatory, but without my knowing it, I believe it was benevolently working on me even after I’d left it.”

We talked about that today and agreed that the experience of seeing photobooks often is better than seeing the prints, there is something personal, intimate, and evocative about studying a book of work, in your own space and on your own time. The “ownership” experience. Museums end up being about them.

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I have been motivated to think about the ways in which the current de-leveraging going on in the financial markets will affect photographers. Of course I really don’t “know” what will happen, but I can apply some general ideas and float some theses.

The first thing is that while everyone sees the legislation as a bailout, what is really happening is that the bill is trying to soften the de-leveraging going on right now. Essentially, you had Wall Street investment banks that after many years of de-regulation, going back to the late 80’s, it is not just the current administration that is responsible, these banks were leveraged thirty and 40 to one, whereas commercial banks like the ones we deposit our pay cheques into were limited to something like twelve or fifteen to one. What this leverage meant was that profits were leveraged against profits, paper against paper, and there were no “real” assets against those bets. So now you have a situation which is akin to a margin call, and banks are all hoarding real capital to hedge their bets. But this de-leveraging, the ratcheting down of value against real capital means that wealth is being destroyed. The economy is shrinking. A separate part of this confronts the wisdom of printing money to refloat boat so to speak, but I really don’t want to get that depressed right now.

So what has this to do with emerging photographers? I like to think that over the last five years, the credit bubble helped create a large “supply” in the workforce, those just starting out. And the advent of digital photography also lowered the bar to entry, it was just plain easier to learn enough to be dangerous. So you had a bubble of new photographers entering the system all at once, enabled by the digital bubble which as I have discussed is itself fueled by the credit bubble, and all connected by the www and made accessible through the www. 

You can think of the term “emerging” as a kind of leverage itself. It is a term that is euphemistic at best.  I think the term was a way to sell new photographers into the market at a faster pace than the market was actually responding, but you didn’t notice this in the frenzy. And by frenzy I am speaking of the explosion of blogs, contests for emerging photographers, and also the “leverage” (read onslaught) experienced this last year at openings and festivals. Wall to wall. Way beyond the actual growth of the industry. Everyone has always wanted to be a photographer, as a cliche, but this was different. 

I think it is also no surprise that the number of rep firms have swelled beyond all proportion in the last decade, the supply of new photographers (and new ideas, as well, it is not all bad) was a downpour, and reps provided the kind of gatekeeping mechanism that editors, whom have been reduced in number, used to provide, at least in editorial. And the marginal cost of adding another shooter outweigh the burden on the rep, at least in a bubble. It is another form of leverage. But contrast this with the contraction in the industry experienced after 9-11, when lots of us didn’t work for a long time, and I believe we now have a definite oversupply of talent and and paucity of work. Which can only go down further as the economy collapses.

The conclusion is that the industry has to go through another contraction, 9-11 style or worse. It has already shed some baggage, notice how many labs are suddenly not there? Film is no longer the license to print money. Digital was the license to print money, as I said in the last post, but I think that may be coming to an end. I think there is no way we cannot shed “workers” in the coming recession, and by workers, I think you have to always look at the newest, least experienced, least seasoned, least tolerant of repetitive downturns. I have been through two already. (ok, so this is really a sales pitch, yes I will be here after all of this is over) But as I always said, “emerging to what?” 

Just trying to be ‘truthy.

NB: another similar post here

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In light of this discussion on the protocols of appropriating images online at APE, read this exchange over on Jim Goldstein’s blog with the “creator” of the Sarah Palin bikini spoof image. (via Chase Jarvis)

In the mail today;

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I didn’t go to this one but MDM put me on to it. About the only thing I can pull from it is this quote, which relates to my post yesterday, at about 30:35:

CLD: What artists, painters do you like to look at?

RF: Well when I…right off the top of my head I think of Hopper…I mean because I have seen the paintings so often, and then I think of the painting my wife (June Leaf) does, I think of…I don’t think so much of paintings really, I think of going out in the street and walking the street and look at people, that’s my favourite, that’s what I like to do…well that’s what…it’s great to keep up your curiosity about what’s around the corner…and it gets harder as you get older but I had that…to walk around with my camera and my curiosity of what is around the corner was important and there are many corners to turn…

moving on… The interview is pretty horrid but what comes out is that RF is extraordinarily sweet, grateful, and patient…

Does anyone have any links to audio or video of the NY photo talks? Anyone? Anyone? » Read the rest of this entry «

Aside from Roger Ballen’s now legendary shadowland monologue, and Simon Norfolk’s making cream corn of an unfortunate festival goer who asked “that question,” (more on that later) Tim Barber’s “Various Photographs” exhibit merits some discussion.

It was apparent from the git-go that someone was not happy, I missed out on the early brouha but it seems the show is not hung the way Tim envisioned. Donald Rumsfeld to the rescue: you go to hang with the space you have not the space you want…

I think TB backpedalled a little too soon, while a single line would have been different and more like his website, I don’t believe the net effect would have been much different. He says it himself, it is a “mish-mash” and whether one row or three, there are a lot of pictures to look at, all sized and framed exactly alike. Three rows creates more narrative connections between different images, so I am not sure what the fuss is about. More likely it was an apology for curation, or curation 2.0 as we are supposed to call it.

Tim’s stated mission was to create “an accessible neutral venue” for a large body of work from all over the world. In this he succeeds completely. He also wanted “an exquisite corpse” and I can see that also.  There is always this populist democratic streak in photography, an anti-elitism. I think it is just the same old process where the new overturns the old. But this dogma comes up again and again, this kind of neutrality, objectivity, democracy. I think it is completely misunderstood.

This is obviously Tim’s show. If there has been a complaint that the NY photo festival is too much about the curators, I respond, so what? We NEED curators, now more than ever, and Tim’s show represents what you get when a curator abnegates responsibility. The point of curation is not to be neutral or accessible, the point is take care of the work and assume responsibility for revealing its meaning. So point one, you have to stand by what is on the wall, regardless. There is no spilled milk here. I think it is extraordinarily irresponsible to distance yourself from what you have done because of contingencies beyond your control. So what, get on with it. 

The real issue is the work on the wall and does it stand up and what is the effect? There are great individual images in the show. But what does it mean to create a group show of hundreds of photographers? For me what happens is the net effect is to de-authorize, horrible phrase, the work. It negates authorship. Suddenly a McGinley could be a Cox, a Kane could be a Traegeser, a Heller a Sutherland, and X could be a Y. What you are seeing is Barber’s own hand, you could interchange this show with a number of his own person galleries and be none the wiser, there would be smoke clouds, random livestock, people in baggy underwear and bloody noses in both. So he strips the work of the original author and substitutes his own imprimatur, and then takes the back door out by saying it is accessible and neutral, and oh, by the way, not what I intended.

I don’t believe it is fair to the people included in the show to be honest. It is reductio-ab-absurdum. One of the panel discussions was Curation 2.0 with Jen Bekman and Laurel Ptak. Guess who was wearing the ironic trucker hat? And really did not have a presentation to make. It was embarrassing compared to many other presentations. And this was one of the festival CURATORS. Breaking news, there is a responsibility there, take it.

Other embarrassments….

Katherine Wolkoff’s presentation on her work also springs to mind, this is one example of you not wanting to hear an artist talk about their work. And maybe we should not expect artists to do this, I don’t know that it is their job after the work is up (but see SN below..). Basically she is really enamoured with a pseudo victorian scientific sensibility coupled with the opposite Romantic sensitive artist streak and throw in a little 60’s environmental crunchy-granola for good measure. Yes it was that painful, sensitive and tortured. Just go see the pictures…

Kathy Ryan misattributes Simon Norfolk’s love of painting and gets a soft glove in the face…but don’t worry, they will hug it out…

Did I hear Rothko invoked again? I thought this was a photography festival, but it seems to be a painting festival. NOthing boils my blood faster than hearing that olde chestnut proffered about how much better a picture is because it evokes a painting…Dammit please can we just have our own medium thank you? I don’t hear people saying that book was so much better or that sculpture was so much better because it was based on a frick’n painting.  So SN got up there and said, I don’t like painting, and these examples I am going to show you are crap, which they were. I am being hyperbolic here, I do know that good work evokes and speaks to other work, there are resonances, references, riffs. Can I just for once hear someone say that picture is better because it is based on a Coltrane track? Then it would just be a reference, and not rationale. Painting and photography have nothing in common except they are a flat thing hung on a wall….and you need your eyes, altho I suppose the blind can enjoy paintings by touch. Oh no, another way in which photograph is deficient…

Simon Norfolk’s presentation was very smooth, this guy has a mind you don’t want to meet in a darkened alley. How this guy gets access to the places he does is a miracle. He basically makes you want to give up photography because the rigor of his ideas sucks all the oxygen out of the room faster than a fuel-air explosion. I think we all felt our innards leaving our mouths at the end.

Two things: he says he does not want to see another photograph of an orphan baby in a refugee camp because he was told that if he bought the bracelet and donated to this other thing and supported the whatever that he would never have to see another orphan baby photograph. In other words he thinks that the emotional confrontation photography sometimes employs is a dead strategy. He prefers the cool intellectual “unpacking” of the black box, although his rage is white hot. His own emotion on the subject tells you the weakness in this argument. To see his work without his own calculated tirade is actually less effective. SN is as much the picture as the picture. I wanted to suggest that he go on the road with the slideshow like Al Gore, because it was a great display. I think you need the emotion, you cannot help but begin in emotion. SN chooses to then take that and sublimate it to a more rigorous intellectual photograph, but I don’t believe it relieves us of having to witness pain, and I think we are on worse ground if we do.  Anyway that is just his choice. 

Second thing: that choice became the subject of an unfortunate question, does the aestheticization of suffering (in either mode, emotional or rational) diminish and exploit suffering? This was the the first question posed after the fuel-air bomb went off. SN ripped him a new one. It is a sensitive point, the charge that creating beautiful photographs of destruction somehow trivializes the evil underneath. He said, well, do you feel that way about this work, and the questioner blanched, and then SN asked the entire audience if anyone else felt that way, and I had the perverse feeling that I wanted to raise my hand simply because it would be fun to see what happened. There was no way you were going to have this argument with this man, the old admonishment, never argue with someone with a microphone applies. The vehemence of the response suggests that it has been thought about however. So there are two parts to this, there is SN’s own personal commitment to his work, which is unassailable, and there is the responsibility that art has in the world at large. Is it enough? What is the function of beauty in photographs of conflict? What is the function of photography itself? I think it circles back to painting sorry to say. There were painters and illustrators sent to most of the major american conflicts, the World Wars, the Korean War, Vietnam, possibly even BushOne v. Hussein and BushTwo v. Hussein. I don’t think anyone ever criticized these artists for making battlefield drawings or paintings, or suggested that it was somehow exploitive. Yet photography is always criticized for precisely this insensitivity. But can you remember a single War painting in the same way as a Nick Ut? 

SN employs his own “shock and awe” in this, by creating seductive work he gets you to look, and then he hopes you consider and think. In this way he is no different from the orphan baby photographers. Essentially this is all you can do with photography, or art, regardless of how tragic, awesome, sublime or liminal it is. What is unfortunate is that the photographer in making the work also assumes the responsibility of how it gets received and used in the world. Different populations will regard the images differently. The context of a coffee table book is different from a gallery wall is different from a personal slideshow and artist talk. Yet the photographer somehow has to control it all and that is impossible. His own explanation was the best I have heard, that going out in the world making pictures causes him to come into contact with people, and their stories are horrific and he feels absolutely responsible to act based on those realities. It is amazing that such an emotional man can create such cool work.

If you are still with me, I thank you for hanging in this long. I want to go back today and see the rest of the typologies exhibit so I might have more to add. » Read the rest of this entry «