When I was a teenager
in South East London I belonged to the youth section of the Labour
Party. It was called the Young Socialists and as a revolutionary organization
ranked somewhere between the Boys Scouts and the Yale Glee Club. However
that didn’t prevent us from acting out all the fantasies of being
an underground radical cabal. We would meet in a council flat (city
housing project to you) in the rather complacent blue-collar neighborhood
of Lee, where the only truly working class member of our group lived
with his mum and dad. Because we were certain that our activities
would be bound to attract the counter-terrorist unit of MI5 we would
devise carefully coded door knocker sequences which would cause whoever
was on the inside to ask the question: “Who’s there?”
The correct response was your name, followed by the honorific “comrade”
As in: “It’s Peter, Comrade.” This was the only way
you would be allowed entrance unless it happened that the comrade’s
mum was by the door when you knocked. Under these circumstances J.
Edgar Hoover himself would have been let in and given a cup of tea.
However my experiences with the Young Socialists gave me a couple
of things that I took into adult life. One is that a life in politics
is really boring and should be avoided at all costs. The other was
knowledge of how collective bargaining works, and how there really
is strength in numbers.
I still only partially understand why it has always proved to be impossible
for photographers to organize when faced with threats to their livelihood,
whether they are lower percentages, a loss of rights, or any of the
other travails that have plagued the photo industry in the last decade
or so. I realize that photographers for the most part are people who
prefer not to join organizations, who like working by themselves,
who are creative and unpredictable, who are competitive, and who are
often cynical and suspicious. In fact it’s all of these qualities
that endear them to me, and that, when you get right down to it, I
share. However, having understood that, there are other creatives
who have many similar qualities but who still join with their fellow
workers to present a unified front in defense of their professional
needs. The recent negotiations in Hollywood between the writers and
producers are a good example. They may not have been totally successful
for the writers, but the film companies certainly took them seriously,
and are likely to proceed with much more caution in the future based
on this experience.
So why is it that traditionally photographers have been incapable
of uniting in a common cause. I understand the legal reasons as a
result of help from Nancy Wolff. Every photographer is regarded under
the law as an independent contractor, and if a group of independent
contractors try and force collective agreements this falls foul of
the anti-trust laws. Although I understand this it still seems to
me to be a perversion of the intent of those laws. But there must
be ways for photographers to protect their common interests and not
have the Justice Department do a Microsoft on them. I think that we
are seeing a movement afoot that might do just that. Remarkably it
may be in the form of photographers’ cooperatives.
Until recently the term “photographers’ cooperative”
should have been in the Guinness Book of World Records under the heading
“World’s Greatest Oxymoron.” Certainly anyone who has
attended, heard about, or seen in the BBC documentary on Magnum the
annual members’ meeting would agree with this. The word contentious
doesn’t even begin to describe the atmosphere. But the advent
of the Internet has changed many things in photography, and one of
the most advantageous is that it has reduced the isolation under which
most photographers used to work. Groups like EP and APA may have marked
the beginning of a new attitude towards cooperation. It seems that
every week now I hear about one group or another forming alliances,
whether it is the disaffected Getty photographers in the StockArtistsAlliance,
or the group of seven leading photojournalists who have banded together
under the simple if uninspired name Seven. For certain photographers
under certain circumstances working together in a loose association
such as this may be a better alternative to a traditional agency.
The time is right to try this because there are so many companies
springing up that can offer these groups the support that they need
in terms of on-line licensing, workflow management including invoicing
and many other functions that agencies traditionally undertook for
their photographers.
This kind of arrangement may even develop into the next iteration
of the photographic agency. When agencies such as Sygma and Gamma
in editorial and the Image Bank in commercial started up they were
revolutionary, and redefined the way photography was sold, but that
was over thirty years ago. It was appropriate for that time and place.
It probably doesn’t work that well today. In fact not much is
working well today, and it’s time to question the way everything
operates, from the magazine market through copyright protection and
agency representation. We may find that the tried and true ways are
still the best, but that discovery won’t be made until we challenge
them. To do this there has to be a real change in attitude on the
part of many photographers. Until the realization that what’s
good for one is often good for all it’s going to be impossible
to make any real progress towards industry practices that are better
and more equitable for photographers. A lot of egos are going to have
to be put on one side to achieve the progress that is so necessary.
That things are bad in this industry is apparent to everyone involved.
I can’t think of the last time that I got what could even be
loosely interpreted as good news, and in a bizarre way this actually
may be the good news. Change often evolves from desperate circumstances,
and it sometimes takes backs to be against the wall to push movement
forward. If photographers can find new ways of working together to
protect their common goals in a spirit of true comradeship, then maybe
the pain will have been worthwhile. If this ever happens, however,
please do me a favor. Don’t call me Comrade Howe. I would hate
to lose my citizenship as the result of Un-American activities.
Peter Howe
Contributing Editor
peterhowe007@msn.com
