…The New York Times itself, revenue actually increased by 0.3 percent from a year ago. Compare that to the previous quarter, when the paper’s revenue slid 2 percent. Year-over-year revenue had been negative for eleven of the previous twelve quarters.
What happened this time? The Times put up a paywall on its website and asked readers to pay for its expensive-to-produce news. […]The new online subs helped push up the paper’s circulation revenues by 1.6 percent, where they had fallen 2.9 percent in the first quarter.
Jonathan Blaustein: You’ve got a background in art. You received a BFA in painting from Rutgers. Go Jersey. And you’re from New Jersey as well?
Ariel Shanberg: I am.
JB: Me too. So how did you transition from painter to non-profit executive director?
AS: As a young artist graduating from Rutgers, I knew where New York City was, how to get there and find my way around. But I was much more interested in finding an environment where the arts and making art were more enmeshed with life. New York City felt like business, and I wanted to find a place that was more focused on the other aspects of art. Luck and serendipity brought me to Woodstock.
I had heard a bit about it while I was in school from a few of my professors, Martha Rosler and Diane Neumaier, who had done things with CPW. So I walked in, introduced myself, and asked how I could be involved. They said they had a internship program, and I said “That sounds great.” I was 23 at the time, and really looking to get exposed to arts administration, and what it was like to facilitate arts programming for the community.
I was really fortunate growing up, because art was a part of my daily life. Both of my parents had studied to be artists, and I was surrounded by friends of theirs who were artists as well. It was that love of art, when I got to CPW, that got me to say, “Yeah, I’ll work here for free.” And it hasn’t changed that much over the years.
JB: So you decided to move to Woodstock as an art community, and then you got the job?
AS: Exactly. I loved that it (CPW) was nestled in the daily life of Woodstock. That it wasn’t set in some arts district, or some stand-alone place that you had to drive to. You could literally get a cup of coffee, a morning paper, paper towels and groceries, and stop in and see what was on view at CPW.
JB: You know, it’s funny, it’s almost like you’re reading my to-do list. It says buy paper towels, and go see an art show. On a random Tuesday. It says so right here. (editors note: No, it doesn’t.)
AS: That access, and having art available to the general public was something that was really important to me. It wasn’t something that only people with certain degrees do, or people who have extra time. Everybody should see an exhibition at least once a week. It’s an opportunity to exercise your mind and see the world through other people’s eyes.
JB: CPW runs exhibitions, lectures, workshops, artist residencies, fellowships, and publications. A bit of everything. How does it all fit together, beyond the fact that it’s all coming out of one physical space? How did the program evolve to be so wrap-around?
AS: CPW’s founding was in response to the fact that photographers didn’t have a home in one of the country’s oldest art colonies. It was established first as the Catskills Center for Photography, so photographers would have a place to exhibit their work, foster community, and develop their own knowledge. When our founders, which included Howard Greenberg and Michael Feinberg, began the institution, they started with exhibitions and workshops. Two very basic things. One was using wall space to show work, as the first shows were Walker Evans and Russell Lee. Nice roots to begin the endeavor.
JB: The workshops went hand in hand with the exhibitions, because I would imagine the workshops would create a revenue stream that would enable you guys to keep the doors open from the beginning?
AS: That was part of it, but it was more about connecting photographers. We’re talking about 1977, when there weren’t that many photo programs in schools. Photography was still struggling for legitimacy within the art world. People were looking to take this utilitarian device that everyone had in the house, and do something more with it. The desire was to connect people who had something to offer to people who wanted to learn. That’s always been the motive and the mission of the workshop program. We want to see people develop their practice, refine their vision, and achieve their goals. Whether that be to exhibit in a gallery, to have an essay published, to refine their website, or build connections with other photographers.
Over the years, the staff and various directors have looked at who’s getting served in the field, who’s getting opportunities, who needs to be championed, and how can we help? Right off the bat, pre-Internet, the magazine, Photography Quarterly, was established to connect with audiences beyond our immediate borders. It has achieved that, and even with the Internet, the print publication serves as a lasting document archive to the ideas and the work. With some of our other programs, like the fellowship award, it was specifically designed to help artists working in Upstate and Central New York.
Our residency program ties us to the deepest roots of Woodstock as an artists colony. Even though we had a darkroom and expertise, it wasn’t something we were actively engaging. The program got started in 1999, and has allowed us to play a role in the creation of some pretty significant bodies of work by some great artists. It’s all about nurturing artists, whether it be educating them, giving them opportunity, serving as a bridge. Sometimes we need a bridge to master artists to mentor and educate us, or a bridge to audiences to connect our work to them. We also hope to be a bridge for artists to collectors, and to audiences who will become stake-holders in their own work and efforts.
JB: You mentioned that Howard Greenberg was a founder, and I noticed that some major New York gallerists were on your advisory board, like Yossi Milo, Brian Clamp, & Daniel Cooney. How does that connection to the NYC gallery world drive your programming?
AS: Dan Cooney is an alum of SUNY-New Paltz, and as a young college student, in his summers, would come up to Woodstock and attend our visiting artist lectures. Some of his best education in photography, as he shared with me, came from our lectures. Which, when you’re living in Upstate New York, you wouldn’t normally get in a small rural town of six thousand people. Which speaks to why some of those people are on our advisory board, but also where that education and bridge-building goes. Dan’s a great example. With all those people you’ve mentioned, and others, they really value CPW’s commitment to nurturing artists, particularly emerging artists. As galleries, they recognize the important role that spaces like CPW play in the role in the development of artists that they will eventually work with.
JB: How do you see the role of non-profit galleries as differing from commercial galleries, both to the artists and the art audience?
AS: We’re not commerce driven. We have a different definition of success. We’re really interested in risk-taking and providing a platform where artists can push their work and experiment. We don’t need to make sales because we’re supported by grants and foundations. I think that non-profit spaces are great places for young, emerging artists to be discovered. I have no qualms on being a step on a ladder in career development. The other thing, and this goes beyond emerging artists, but for mid-career artists too, the scholarly and curatorial investigation of artists’ work that can take place at spaces like ours. Being outside of the market-driven art world, we’re able to have conversations on and through the work of photographers, (and artists working with related media) that help contextualize their work in a larger dialogue.
JB: I noticed you guys did an exhibition from the VII agency late last year. You were showing prints that, certainly in the past, would have been considered photo-journalism. What was the audience reaction to being surrounded by that kind of suffering and tragedy?
AS: It was a great exhibition that was organized by Tufts University, and we were really honored to have it on view. The exhibition space is a remarkable environment where you can slow time down, and you can ask people, particularly with a still image, to consider the ideas or histories, and the narrative that often flash by our eyes. They can see things with a new light or perspective, as they’ve been re-contextualized outside of news information sources. The response to the show was pretty much, across-the-board in awe. For the commitment that the photographers in VII have made to telling these stories, and to the generosity of their subjects as well. There are many people in devastating situations and plight, but I think people left that exhibition feeling a little more connected. Maybe a little more responsible for the world we live in. It definitely did not leave people feeling down and depressed. I think the notion of going to a gallery just for entertainment or escape can work sometimes, but it should not define the exhibition space, or the museum-going experience. We seek to challenge and provoke our audience.
JB: One of the reasons that you and I got to chatting in Santa Fe last month was that you mentioned you were doing a show called “Camp: Visiting Day,” about the predominantly East Coast, I want to say 80’s experience, but I’m sure it’s still alive and well. I spent time, back in the day, in a sleep-away camp in Pennsylvania and one in New York. (The singer Pete Yorn was in my bunk for a couple of years.) A few weeks before we chatted in Santa Fe, I had some spare time, which is rare, and I found myself cyber-stalking my old camp bunkmates on Facebook. Not friending anybody, just finding the public photo albums, and trying to get a sense of what these goofballs looked like as 30-something dads and husbands. A lot of puffy faces, I assure you.
Truthfully, I’m not in touch with any of these people, they haven’t impacted my adult life, and yet I could recite everyone’s name in five seconds. These guys still pop up in my sub-conscious. So I found the experience pretty formative, and I was excited to hear you were curating a photo exhibition about Camp. I thought maybe you could tell us a bit about how you came to curate the show, and how it has resolved itself on the wall.
AS: Camp is not something that everybody has experienced, but it’s one of the most defining elements in our transition from young people to adults for those of us who have. It’s the first experience for people, sleep-away camp specifically, that they are away from their parents and have a certain sense of autonomy. While there’s supervision, it’s almost an unabashed indulgence in youth. Swimming, sports, arts & crafts. It’s also a place where we try out and explore our identity. There’s something about the nine months of the school year that lock us into a sense of perspective of identity that may or may not be our own. One that’s pressured by certain societal and social norms, and when people go to camp, they’re often interacting with kids who might not live in the same county or state. So there’s an opportunity to reinvent or claim for the first time who you are. With this being our summer exhibition, I wanted to celebrate that.
I’m a person who went through a number of years of sleep-away camp, they were really some of the first moments where I was able to see myself as an individual. The artists I ended up including in the exhibition really celebrate and identify the ways that we relate to camp. You have somebody like Jennifer Loeber, who photographed shortly after attending Rowe camp, which she went to in Western Massachusetts. This is a camp where literally, kids are governing themselves. They’re planning their schedule, and in a society where kids tend to be so over-programmed these days, this was an incredibly empowering experience. During their time there, they have the opportunity for them to mock normal conventions, and celebrate eccentricity and individuality.
Photograph by Adrain Chesser
Photograph by Adrain Chesser
Photograph by Albert Winn
Photograph by Albert Winn
Photograph by Anthony Goicolea
Photograph by Gay Block
Photograph by Gay Block
Photograph by Jennifer Loeber
Photograph by Jennifer Loeber
Photograph by Lauren Greenfield
Photograph by Lauren Greenfield
(click images for larger version)
JB: If we had had that back in my day, with the kids in control, it would have been Guns’ n Roses on the loudspeaker all day, every day. “Welcome to the Jungle” on a total loop until everyone killed themselves. Which, in retrospect, doesn’t sound like such a good idea.
AS: We had something similar, but it lasted only 24 hours. It was called Revolution, and the oldest bunk in the camp kicked out all the staff except for the kitchen staff, because of course you can’t let the kids get hungry. By the end of it, no matter how much fun you had, you learned just what a tough job it was, and you were happy to see those counselors come back.
JB: I suspect you might have been more responsible than I. You and I know, and now the audience will know, that there are probably dozens of summer camps within a 50 mile radius of where you’re at. Has it crossed your mind to try to set up some sort of field trip where kids actually come check out the work on the wall?
AS: Originally, we had hoped that would be the case. There are some adult themes within the exhibition that make it challenging to get a blanket approval for a camp audience of teens.
JB: One of the artists, you’re referring to, his camp was purchased and turned into something very different…
AS: You are correct. Adrain Chesser, as a young boy and a Boy Scout, went to a campground in Southern Florida, and struggled at that time with being a closeted gay male. In an act of sublime surprise, he found out years later that the very same campground was purchased by a group of gay men who turned it into a gay campground. He returned, as an adult gay male, to photograph that campground. The pictures evoke the joy and freedom of camp, the game-playing and interpersonal relationships that take place. I love the work, it’s some of my favorite in the show. But when you’re bringing in a group of kids from different families and backgrounds, it’s a challenge to make sure that everybody’s going to be OK with it.
JB: You mean their parents.
AS: The younger generation is always more open to new ideas and ways of being than the parental generation. One of the things we will never do is compromise by shielding the work in an exhibition…I don’t believe in censorship, and we’ll leave it at that.
JB: It sounds like you’ve got certain elements to your programming that you do on an annual basis. You were mentioning that you’ve an annual fundraiser, and I know that every year you do a show called “Photography Now,” with a major juror. This year it was Vince Aletti, and in past years Darren Ching and Charlotte Cotton. I would imagine if you get to look at the submissions yourself, that probably gives you an interesting snapshot on what’s being done in a given year. Have you noticed any changes in tenor, style or subject matter? Are there strong themes that emerge each year, or is it just a hodgepodge?
AS: In 2010, Lesley Martin was our juror as well. What has really shifted over time, in looking over the submissions from year to year, the overall quality is getting stronger. I think that is reflective of the craftsmanship within photography, and people’s visual language is getting more refined. The other thing that’s getting stronger is the multitude of strains and genres of photography. We’re in a time where working with wet plate alternative processes is as relevant as someone who is working with the visual language of the computer age as well as somebody who is traveling through the mountains of Tora Bora. That’s what’s exciting about the time we’re in.
As far as the jurors go, based upon their own track records and perceived interests, and I want to emphasize perceived, each competition or call for entries attracts a different set of applicants. With Vince Aletti this year, one of the really remarkable things was how he was cognizant of his daily life experience impacting what he chose. As Vince professed, he’s a portrait person. Yet having been a juror for World Press Photo, and having spent ten days looking at intense, narrative, photojournalistic and documentary work, when he came back and had the DVD with all our applicants, he found himself gravitating towards a different type of work. Photographs that reflected more artistic exploration, with evidence of craft and the artist’s hand, that he wouldn’t have responded to had he not had that experience. That’s something that’s very generous of a juror to reveal. To reduce it to the simplest terms, it’s like saying “Hey, I had pancakes for breakfast, so I was attracted to things that are round.”
JB: The shoe was on the other foot, in that you were just a juror for a group exhibition at the Houston Center for Photography. What did you bring to the table?
AS: There’s a different approach in jurying a group exhibition, versus curating an exhibition, like the Camp exhibit, which was an idea that was percolating in my mind for twelve years. When it came to the HCP member’s show, I recognized this as a subset of photography I am pulling from, and wanted to find the best of the best. I was interested in putting together an exhibition for them that celebrated the great range of power that photography has as a communicative tool.
JB: I’d love to get to see it, but I have no plans to go to Houston this summer.
AS: On their website, they have at least one image for each artist, which is a nice survey of the work in the show. But I have to say that nothing beats seeing the work in person.
JB: I’ll have to check it out. We talked about what you do up in Woodstock, and there are so many programs available to photographers, but what’s the best way for someone
to get on your radar screen. How do you like people to get their work in front of you?
AS: One of the important roles of a not-for-profit space like CPW is to be as accessible as possible. That said, it’s also important to recognize that we do a lot, and when somebody approaches us, we want to know that there’s a serious level of commitment, not only to their work, but to the possibility of us working together with them. One of the things I strongly advise against is, don’t just send us an email saying, “Hey, take a look at my website.” We want someone to really take the time to introduce themselves to us. We want to them to show they’ve been thoughtful in their approach to us, because we’re going to be thoughtful in our approach to them.
JB: Sounds like a thorough, well-thought-out info packet, on the heels of some serious research into what you guys have shown and funded in the past.
AS: Always the best way. And don’t start the letter to me with Dear Ms. Shanberg.
JB: (laughing) You know we’re not going to cut that. It’s going right into the interview.
AS: I had a feeling. It’s one of the trials of having a gender-ambiguous name.
JB: How about Dear Sir or Madam? You’ve got to get a lot of those, right?
AS: That just reflects not doing the homework. All you have to do is read one of the staff member’s bio’s to see who to send things to and what their gender is.
JB: It’s funny. You and I met briefly at the PDN Expo that I chronicled for APE last year, and listening to the lectures during the event, that piece of advice was spouted
so many times. Do your homework. I came away wondering how could it be possible that so many people don’t?
AS: I’ll say this, making your photography, doing your art, is something that for a lot of people is a combination of technical skill, professional know-how, and personal dream and fantasy. Being an artist is this incredibly fantasized notion, and for a lot of people, it’s a place where they put their dreams. When you’re doing that, you tend to forget your practical business skills, or you tend not to think about bringing all the other skills you have to it. Because it’s about being “creative.” To put it in a concise term, being creative doesn’t mean not being professional.
Heidi: Why the popsicles and how much dialogue was there with the make-up artist/Amber about color?
Emily: The photo editor came to me with the idea of an “oral fixation” type of shoot…lollipops, popsicles, candy, etc. This shoot was for their Sex Issue so he really wanted to push it in terms of the sexuality. I went shopping and bought a few different things that Amber could put in her mouth…all of them were colorful and visual. My main goal was to make the shoot interesting looking and not just sexual. I did speak with the make up artist about using bright colors to go with the brightly colored food, and we had colorful backdrops as well. I felt if we could get an overall look going it would modernize the pictures and add an element to the shoot.
I know you started your career shooting a lot of bands and music has a strong influence on your life. Your husband just supervised the soundtrack for 30 Minutes or Less do you two collaborate on projects? How much music do you shoot now?
I actually don’t shoot as much music as I used to. I still love music and love photographing musicians, but I seem to get more calls to shoot actors or other notable types (writers, politicians, chefs, etc.) lately. I’ve also been shooting more advertising work which has been great, but less geared towards music. In terms of my hubby, yes, he just music supervised 30 Minutes or Less which is very exciting! I’m very proud of him. Music supervision is a perfect fit for his music snobbery…I can’t really think of a better job for him. We do collaborate on projects. He has been instrumental in many aspects of my work, but mostly he comes up with great ideas and pushes me to complete projects and not be lazy. My series Nature Calls was his idea, and he always comes with me when I photograph for that project.
Do you use your blog like a loose portfolio? Your Alaska rough scans are a great series, but did you not work on them at all? Is it easier for you to post on your blog, meaning, its not your book, but you know people are looking. How picky are you?
I like to use my blog for lots of things – self promotion, a diary of sorts, a place to show my personal work, somewhere to write about my feelings on photography, the photo industry, and what it’s like making a living as a photographer. I do post images on my blog that I have no other real place for at that moment; pictures I’d like to show people or see together in a group, but I could never put every single picture somewhere in my book or on my website so it’s nice to have a place where the edit doesn’t have to be so tight.
My “rough scans” (Alaska included) are images that I scan at home on my crappy scanner and do a little light color correction, curves, etc. on so I can see which images are worthy of a drum scan and professional post production. It’s nice to put little groups of images together and also nice to get people’s feedback on images. I’m fairly picky about what images I scan and show on my blog. For starters, it’s time consuming to scan stuff at home and use my mediocre Photoshop skills to make images look presentable. Second, I don’t show images, both commercial and personal, that I’m not proud of or find interesting in some capacity.
I have found my images in every nook of the Internet, mostly attributed and not altered in any way, but often unattributed, remixed, appropriated as paintings or drawings and cropped in ways that offend me to no end. Every time I come across my work presented like this, I cringe a little, but most of the efforts are benign and nobody is profiting off my intellectual property. When someone is profiting, I shut that shit down.
A major symposium on the current state of the field was held at SFMOMA in April 2010. You can view all the videos and transcripts (here).
Watch Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Peter Galassi (former chief curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York), Vince Aletti (New Yorker photography critic), Charlotte Cotton, Jennifer Blessing (Guggenheim Museum photography curator) and other luminaries discuss the topic.
Fascinating discussion best taken in small doses to avoid an ice cream like brain freeze (for example, they don’t agree on what photography is).
Global ad expenditure is now forecast to grow 4.1% in 2011, reaching $471 billion, the same as the peak level of spending in 2008, according to projections by ZenithOptimedia.
More robust growth is forecast to resume in 2012 and 2013, up 5.9% and 5.6%, respectively.
Heidi: How did this collaboration work? Did you get sketches of the Smurfettes in order to shoot the products at the right angle? Were the accessories shot on a model or a form built to scale for the Smurfette?
Jeffrey: The whole thing started with an idea and some rough sketches from Harpers Bazaar and Sony Pictures. Harper’s fashion dept pulled some accessories together to create 4 different looks and the idea was to shoot the accessories on a live model in the desired poses from said sketches. Basically I would light each look for the accessories, then the designer from Sony would step in to shoot a 360 degree view of my set to recreate lighting angles in post on their Smurfette. He would then collect my raw files along with his 360 shots and toss them to his team, who would strip out the accessories and place them on their digital Smurfette. The shoot happened in Hearst’s digital studio and we all had a great time.
I recently worked with one of our photographers to produce a quote for an mid-sized ad agency for a series of brochure portraits plus video of some of the same subjects for use on a website. The client was a foundation that was raising money to build a community park. Though construction was already about half finished, the foundation was short about 10 million dollars to complete the project, which is why they needed the marketing materials.
The brochure, which would be sent out to a relatively small mailing list, and the companion micro website would rely heavily on photography and feature big donors explaining what the foundation meant to them and why people should donate to this project. 17 donors had provided testimonials, and each would sit for an environmental portrait that would run full-page in the brochure. The donors, who are well-known in the community, would be photographed in places associated with their previous philanthropic and/or professional work. Additionally, the photographer would need to shoot video testimonials for 3 of the 17 donors, which after editing, would end up being about 20-seconds each.
After getting the basic project description from the photographer, I called the art buyer to get a little more detail. I wanted to find out who else was bidding on the job, exactly what licensing they needed (publicity use, one-time brochure use and web use of the still photos and web use of the videos), including the dimensions (8.5 x 11″) and number of pages in the brochure (40), the number of photographs they expected to use and their sizes (17 – all full-page), the number of copies they were printing (1500), the distribution area (local – within 50 miles) and the lifespan of the piece (about 2 years). And I wanted to better understand the production values they were looking for. For example, would they be willing to pay for professional hair & make-up (yes)? (In short, I try to visualize the end result and then work backwards, thinking about how the photographer will reach that result. I ask as many questions as necessary in order to transform my initial vague idea into something very specific.) The art buyer told me the names of the other photographers they were looking at (all solid photographers), but didn’t offer a specific budget. There are times when a client knows how much they want to spend on photography, which is a big help. Then I can go straight to figuring out what to put towards the fee and how much money to devote to the production rather than trying to decipher how important the project is to them. Knowing who the other photographers are helps too. The list of names will be a good indication of the client’s level of sophistication and expectation (and their willingness to pay for good photography). A smart client is going to be happy to provide as much information to the photographer as possible. A smart photographer will use that information to put together a proposal that addresses the very specific needs of that project.
The client asked us to quote the video separately because they weren’t sure it was going to happen. Rather than piggy-backing the video shoots on to the still shoots, we planned on it being a separate day altogether, and in one location that the client would arrange.
With my head firmly around the client’s expectations, the photographer and I talked about how he would approach the still shoot in terms of shoot days, support and equipment. He said he could shoot 3 environmental portraits per day if necessary, as long as he was able to scout each location in advance. He would just need basic lighting and camera gear. He just needed one assistant and a groomer to do light hair and make-up and to fuss with the clothes.
With that, I had everything I needed to formulate the still part of the quote. I began by looking at a few similar jobs that I had recently worked on to remind myself of what fee would be appropriate for 2-year local print collateral use. (I keep a binder of every quote we send out.) I couldn’t find any local collateral, but I had a few that quoted national print collateral at about 1000.00 or so per picture plus expenses, with some coming in a little lower. I then looked at some of my pricing guides. Blink Bid quoted 250.00 – 375.00 per picture (plus expenses) for local collateral and Fotoquote 250.00 – 500.00 per picture (plus expenses) for print runs up to 1000 (they don’t specify geography). Of course, you have to take those numbers with a grain of salt. They’re not suggesting that you do a one-picture shoot for 250.00 plus expenses. Every photographer is going to have their own minimum “day-rate” that they’re not going to go below no matter how small the usage is. In this case, the photographer’s time was a much bigger consideration than the usage.
-The biggest logistical challenge of this shoot (and a big driver of the cost) was scheduling portraits of 17 individuals in 17 different places. So we needed to build some flexibility into the pricing structure. I worked up a quote for a “half-day” (1 person) shoot and a “full-day” (up to 3 people) shoot and let the client decide how efficient they needed to be. I settled on 3750.00 plus expenses for the (fairly long) days where we’d shoot three portraits and 2000.00 for the (relatively short) days that we could only schedule one. This is certainly on the high end of the pricing spectrum for a project like this, but this photographer was particularly well-suited for the project and he was busy enough that he didn’t need to hedge.
-Although I encouraged the photographer to include 2 assistants per shoot day, he assured me that he was comfortable just using his 1st assistant.
-I set the capture fee at 450.00. (I normally put it at 500.00/day but shaved off 50.00 when I saw the total exceeding $40k). The capture fee covers the post-production time required to organize and edit the pictures, and create and deliver a web gallery to the client (for each day’s shoot).
-The equipment rental covered a lens, body and light kit from a local rental house. In this case, the photographer owned his own gear and the fee was fat enough that I only put in for minimal equipment. It would also not be unusual to bundle the equipment charge into the fee on this type of shoot.
-I prorated the scouting costs into “scouting fees” based on the fact that the photographer would scout the 17 locations in one fell swoop, but we needed to break them out for the purposes of the estimate. (1275.00/day for photographer and assistant x 3 days / 17 locations = 225.00 per location.)
The file prep is a bit higher than our usual 50.00 because in my experience with shoots like this, the subjects often have involvement in the selection process which tends to complicate the process.
The agency asked about providing the donors with prints after the shoot as a thank-you for participating in the campaign. The photographer decided to make the prints his donation to the cause.
Since the shoot was local, there wouldn’t be much in the way of mileage and tolls, but parking could add up quickly. Also, the shoot was going to be a small crew on the move with only one AD from the agency, so the charge for meals was pretty basic.
Given that the scheduling was going to be fairly complex and especially since it factored into the ultimate cost of the project, I wanted to be clear that the client was going to handle that. I also specified that the locations and any releases would be provided by the agency.
Next, we started working on the quote for the videos. The agency wanted to create individual 20-second testimonial videos of three of donors in a studio setting (essentially a talking head with a simple cutaway). The photographer was confident he could shoot all three in one day including set-up and break-down. The agency intended to use the videos on microsite that they were going to build onto the foundation’s existing site. However, the expectation for usage on motion work tends to be different than for stills. It seems to be customary for the creative fee to be work-for-hire (in other words, transfer of copyright). There are a number of reasons why this is the case, but that’s a blog post unto itself. Though, there’s no legal reason why a photographer couldn’t limit the licensing to moving images just as they do for stills, especially for small projects like this.
-For the motion part of the project, the photographer would be serving as the director of photography (managing the camera and lights), but the actual interview and partially the direction would come from someone from the foundation. We have found that DOP day rates range from around 2000.00 to about 3500.00. Based on the photographer’s experience, I leaned toward the high end of the range.
-I included a grip to handle the lighting, and a camera assistant to help with setup, lenses, focus, downloads, etc.
-An audio engineer is crucial for a project like this. These guys can hear a lawn mower at 1000 yards. They’ll make sure you don’t get stuck with audio you can’t use.
-The capture fee accounted for the post-processing time and equipment.
-The equipment rental is a bit higher for the video shoot day because it’s a little more exotic than what’s needed for the stills, and the photographer doesn’t own it.
– We included a groomer for hair, makeup and light wardrobe adjustments.
-I was sure to price out sound stage rental, rather than photo studios, to ensure the space was appropriate for audio recording.
– The file transfer fee covered the cost of delivering the large amount of information generated on a video shoot.
– I decided to include catering this time because the crew was bigger and the shoot would be static. I usually figure on roughly 35.00 per person for breakfast, lunch and snacks. For this portion of the project, miles, parking, and tolls would be minimal.
– Lastly, I made sure to note that the agency would schedule the donors, direct and interview them, obtain releases and edit the footage.
After reviewing our estimates with the client, not surprisingly they wanted to trim the budget. They asked us to find a way to get the price down to $30,000.00 (1/3 less than the total first round estimate). Unlike a lot of the clients I’ve worked with lately, this agency was willing to sacrifice aspects of the production to reduce those costs.
First, the client proposed shooting all of the portraits at one of their donor’s homes. This would shave off two scouting days and eliminate the studio rental.
Next was scheduling. Even if they stayed at the same location, the photographer wasn’t comfortable shooting more than 4 unique situations in one day. So we discussed repurposing one situation per shoot day to squeeze in a 5th donor on the still shoot days. The video day would actually be both stills and video of 3 donors. Each donor’s still shot would be captured in the same situation as their testimonial video. This allowed us to shave off almost 3 entire shoot days.
Since the licensing accounted for a relatively small portion of the creative fee, the additional licensing fees still fell mostly inside the day rate. I also bumped the video rate to match the stills rate to account for the image licensing that would need to be included now. It also simplified the estimate.
With the more ambitious schedule, it would be helpful to have additional lighting and another set of hands so we bumped the gear rental up and added a second assistant for the still days. We added catering and reduced the miles, parking, meals and tolls.
You can see the final estimate and terms and conditions here.
The client signed off on the revised estimate. But as of this writing, the scheduling has proven to be a challenge and although the project has been approved, the first shot has yet to be captured.
There is no evidence that we are on the verge of a great new glittering cultural age, there is evidence that we may well be on the verge of a new dark age in cultural terms … where the creative world is destroyed and where all we have is cacophony and self opinion, where we have a crisis of democratised culture.
Here’s an email conversation I had with a reader about cold calling I thought you might be interested in.
Reader: I was reading over one of your past posts => “Photo Editor And Art Buyer Survey” http://plain-glass.flywheelsites.com/2010/07/08/photo-editor-and-art-buyer-survey/ => and noticed that calling potential clients is a bad idea! However, all the agents, ADBASE writers and others really push this as a successful way to get future work. ADBASE constantly posts blogs that really push this as a great way to follow up email promo campaigns. Send out your promo, check back to see who opened your promo and then follow up with that person via a phone call. I was speaking with [redacted] at an LA APA event and she was promoting calling and asking to be put through to voice mail. That way, you don’t bother the person with an awkward phone call. My feeling is that I don’t want to cold call either; on the other hand, I do want to generate business. So what is the right approach? I’m new to the game and I don’t want to come out sucking.
APE: Ok, so tell me what you will say to the person when they pick up the phone?
Reader: I have a partial script worked out. But truth be known, I’d rather not call. It’s as much of a problem for me as it seems to be for them. However, if it’s necessary to get hired then I’m willing to try. My confusion lies in all the things I read online, in mags and listen to at the photo lectures. There seems to be contradicting viewpoints. Which is correct? I don’t want to misstep and come out creating a bad first impression. For example, I have been collecting a database of people that have been showing interest in my ADBASE email promo campaign. The data is tallied from the last six months. Anyone that has opened my email more than 50% of the time (whether they just open the email, click directly to my website or both) seem like a potential candidate to call. I was planning on doing this today for the first time. I was constructing what to say based on various blogs. Then I came across your survey and changed my mind. I then remembered the APA event at Chiat Day. Both the AD & AB said they hate calls. If calling is taboo, then the real question becomes: How do you get hired? Are email promos and direct mailers enough (coupled with all the FB’s and Tweets of course)? After all the emails and mailings, should I just sit back and wait for the right ad campaign or editorial story to pop up in my favor? In essence wait for my phone to ring?
APE: What I’m trying to get at, is do you have a reason for calling them other than they looked at your work? Obviously if they liked it and had a job they would call you. What are you going to say on the call that will move things forward?
Reader: Good point. I guess nothing.
APE: This is how those calls went on my end.
caller: Have you been receiving the promos I’ve been sending you?
me: yes.
caller: do you have any questions?
me: no
[silence]
or
“can I have a job”
The better way to do this is call and ask if you can send in or show your portfolio. If that’s not a possibility you need to produce some targeted promos that will grab their attention. There were plenty of times when the first time I ever talked to a photographer was when I called them up to give them a job. Of course waiting for the phone to ring is a ridiculous proposition so you’ve got to get things under their nose in mail, email, magazines they read, blogs they check out contests they follow that will get them interested.
Reader: Thank you for the advice. Makes sense. What you’re saying is kinda what I was/am planning. I just figured that the “Follow Up” call was a necessary, yet unsavory element to the marketing process. I’m actually relieved that I don’t have do this.
—
I’d love to hear from anyone who advocates cold calling since this is my very myopic point of view. NOTE: I checked out the readers work and it’s good stuff so those “opens” are real interest and this is not just someone clawing at the wind.
Heidi: Was it hard to to manage your equipment on the boat?
Joao: I had big ambitions to bring a big portable strobe like the Profoto 7B onboard, but that was not possible, and would have been impractical.
Just you and an assistant?
Due to space, not even my assistant could come. (So he had a nice day off.)
It was just me, my camera, and a Canon Speedlite on top of the camera.
Tell me something challenging about the shoot.
What I love about being a photographer is that you’re allowed to enter a world very unlike your own, for a brief period of time perhaps, or for as long as it needs to be for you to cover the story. Being out on a fishing trawler in the middle of the sea is a very calming and zen experience. Life is reduced to just the essential, and the tasks at hand. There’s not twitter or facebook there! So my photographic world was reduced to this smaller square footage with three other individuals. The challenge was finding interesting compositions with only these elements. It became about the lives of these men at that moment, and the interaction of the light at dawn, the reflections, the sea, the mechanics of all that equipment, and the fish.
I’ve had a strange situation crop up. I went to your blog to find guidance but the closest I could find was this article on the breakdown of fees for shooting video vs. stills:
In this particular case, I’ve been hired by an ad agency to shoot stills for an annual review, and video for a mini-doc – shot concurrently. So far I followed the structure from the article above – having consulted a few different producers and agents (all of whom are doing their best guesswork since this stills-and-video space is so new). Video was work for hire, and the stills I shot required fees for their use in the review and elsewhere. But here’s the new snag: the client wants to take the annual review in a different direction and fill a portion of the review with stills we’ve pulled straight from the 5D video footage.
The question now is, am I able to charge usage on those frame grabs as well? My thought is yes; If you’re hired to shoot stills and video and decide to shoot it all on the epic and pull your stills from the footage, then those stills require their own usage fees. Though the client is suggesting differently.
It seems with better and better technology and the ability to shoot entire photo jobs with 90fps video bursts, usage would have to defined by their use and not by their method of capture.
I reached out to Vincent Laforet to see what he thought. Here’s his response:
Unless he specified it FIRST in his contract that no stills could be grabbed from video without further compensation, and a detail of how that would be dealt with – the client can grab as many frames from the video as they desire, because that video is WORK FOR HIRE.
Happened to me once and it will never happen again. That’s going to be in all of my contracts from now on.
Heidi: Of course the fish was dead. Was there anything challenging about that shoot for you? How did you get the fish to model for you?
Christopher: All this stuff got shipped to my studio in NYC 2 days prior to the shoot so storage is always entertaining, not to mention the smell.
The shoot was to be “whole” fish and the and then the Escolar arrived filleted because it grows to 6ft in length and it was impossible to get a whole fish shipped.
I refused to shoot fillets because they looked really dull but the skin was like leather and was great as a full page.
The adjoining image required impaling the poor creature head to foot with 1/2 inch armature wire, to facilitate the curve. Then glycerol on the skin to retain the sheen.
Contributor Jonathan Blaustein interviews Sidney Monroe owner of the Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, NM.
Photograph by Irving Haberman
JB: How did you get involved in the business?
SM: It was accidental, almost. After college, I worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Then, I started working in contemporary galleries in New York.
JB: Were you in the photo department at the Met?
SM: I was not. I was in the retail department. It was a fascinating time, because it was at the time of the Tutankhamun exhibition, and it was the first time they put a satellite retail operation in the exhibition, as opposed to just in the gift shop. It spurred their entire retail model. I can’t remember the numbers, but in the three years I was there, sales went from like $3 million to $50 million, because of the expansion of the retail model. This was before they had the retail stores in airports and such.
JB: So is this in the 80’s?
SM: This is in the early 80’s, yeah. I had been a business and economics major in college, and always had an interest in the arts. My circle of friends was always artistically inclined. I was completely talentless…
JB: Entirely, perfectly talentless?
SM: Entirely talentless, but I was always in a circle of creative people. When I took that job at the Met, it was a beginning opportunity in the retail department as they were expanding. Within a year, I became a manger of the book shop. In the book store, you could take anything you wanted to read, you could purchase at at discount, and I immersed myself in learning about art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is an incredible place.
JB: It’s my favorite museum in the world. I studied art more there, when I lived in New York, than even in graduate school.
SM: Anyone who’s been there knows you can spend hours, days wandering, and still not see it all. And I had access to the catacombs, because there’s storage under Central Park. You go down in there, and there’s a Rodin sculpture with a tarp over it. Crates with you can’t imagine what might be in there.
JB: I would kill for a chance to see that. If any of your people end up reading this, I want a secret tour.
SM: I’m sure it’s all changed. Especially in a Post-9/11 world. This was the 80’s, things were very loose, and it was a great training ground.
JB: So you moved from there to the photo gallery world?
SM: The contemporary gallery world.
JB: Where?
Photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt
SM: I started at a gallery that’s no longer in existence, and quite frankly I can’t remember the name. Then I went to The Circle Gallery, which was a commercial galley specializing in contemporary prints. For a while, they were kind of legendary for having a retail model for a gallery, opening different branches in other cities. That’s where I cut my teeth in the art business. That led to an opportunity to meet Alfred Eisenstadt. He was in his 80’s, and had done some museum exhibits. But he had never done a gallery/selling exhibit. Somehow he had gotten in contact with the owner of The Circle Gallery. I was then the director, and became involved in talking with Eisenstadt about doing an exhibit. My wife-to-be and I got to go up to the Time-Life Building, and sit across from Eisie at his desk. We were both in our 20’s, he was in his 80’s, and it was like a lightbulb went off. I was sitting across from a man who has witnessed history.That’s when I got hooked. We did this exhibit, it traveled nationally, and was huge at the time. It was on CNN, Good Morning America, all the morning talk shows.
JB: Had any of the LIFE photographers shown their work in a gallery context before that?
SM: Not so much. Time-Life had a small gallery in the building, and they would routinely do exhibits for the photographers, but nowhere near the scale of a public gallery. Eisie was a very, very smart man. Of all the LIFE photographers, he published dozens of books. He was ahead of his time in that he understood that photojournalism should be more broadly available to the public, as opposed to just existing in a magazine. I firmly believe this drove the last 10 years of his life. He worked on supervising his prints, traveling exhibitions, doing interviews, meeting the public, from the time he was 85 until he died at 96.
That set off a spark for me, and within a couple of years after that, I had two partners and we opened a gallery in Soho on Grand St. It was just devoted to photography, with an emphasis on photojournalism. That gallery opened in the fall of 1996. We did several shows with LIFE magazine photographers, and presented the first ever exhibition from the archives of Margaret Bourke-White’s estate. Fast-forwarding, after 9/11, being in that location was no longer viable for commerce. My wife and I decided to leave Manhattan, come to Santa Fe, and start over.
JB: Why did you choose Santa Fe?
SM: It’s a good question, and we’re just realizing that we’ve been here 10 years, now, and it’s gone by very quickly. We couldn’t find a location in Manhattan quick enough to relocate. The location we had on Grand St was the quintessential Soho gallery. Cast-iron columns, 16 ft ceilings, everything you would want in a beautiful gallery. Already the migration had already started towards Chelsea. We looked, and all that would be available, if you weren’t one of the big players, would be on the 6th, 7th, 8th floor of a building in Chelsea, and I didn’t like that model. We have always believed in photojournalism, and that it needs to be seen by the public. We’re very passionate about spreading the message, so the public is integral to what we do.
We’d visited New Mexico, and I have family roots here. We knew there was a vibrant art scene in Santa Fe. We did some research, and depending on the data, it was either number two or three art market behind Manhattan. Quite frankly, we took a leap of faith. 9/11 happened. We decided in October, we moved over Christmas break, and we opened the gallery in Santa Fe in April of 2002. We honed down very tightly on photojournalism. That’s all we’ve focused on showing here.
JB: Are there other galleries now that have followed your lead and do what you do, or do you still feel like you’ve got a unique position in the market?
Photograph by Bill Eppridge
SM: I think we accidentally found a unique niche. Accidentally, because it followed from a passion. Something sparked, and that’s the direction I went in, and at the time nobody else was really doing it. Now there have always been some photo galleries that show some photojournalism in with their other programming, but to my knowledge, there is still nobody doing pure photojournalism, and that’s really become what we’re known for. Both within the collecting and museum community, and the public gallery-going community as well.
JB: I’m sitting here in the gallery, surrounded by artifacts of American history, and I know you said already that you developed a relationship with Alfred Eisenstadt, and that was the catalyst for the gallery, but how did you develop relationships with the other photographers whose work you show? Especially because I’ve got to imagine you’re working with Estates, because many of these people have passed on.
SM: That’s correct.
–(editor’s note: Right here, we were interrupted by a strange woman who took the time to complain that there were no photographs of dancers on the wall. She felt slighted. Mr. Monroe patiently answered her questions, and treated her with respect, despite the fact that she was behaving like a complete nutbar.)
SM: Partly, it was fortunate timing. When we began, many of these photographers were still alive. Eisenstadt introduced us to many of his colleagues at LIFE magazine, Carl Mydans was still living, as were many of the other LIFE photographers. It’s almost like a fraternity. One of the things we’ve been so passionate about is getting these photographers to make prints while they’re still alive. As a photojournalist, unlike a lot of other photographers, they never considered making prints during their lifetime. They were on assignment. They had a job to to. They got their assignment from LIFE or LOOK or whomever, they went out in the field, shot their work, sent their film back, and chances are they never even saw it. It was edited, and used or not used in a magazine.
When we met some of these other photographers, particularly with Carl Mydans, and we suggested that they could go back through the work and see it fresh. He’s seen it in a magazine, or a book, but to sit down with a negative and a printer…the printer would say, “Carl, you can make it this big or that big, we use different paper, crop it this way or that.” It opened up a whole new possibility for them in doing their work. We’ve met these photographers, we’ve encouraged them to do this, but a lot of times they’re hesitant. It’s just not something that’s in their thought process.
JB: Then. But probably we would say that’s changed.
Photograph by Eddie Adams
SM: That has changed. And now you get a lot more photographers who say, “I want to do what he did.” It really was like a fraternity, and one by one, we either knew about photographers, sometimes we’d talk to them and they’d be resistant. I knew Eddie Adams way back when in New York. Eddie was infamous for refusing galleries. I never really approached him, but I’d always talk to him about it. Within a few months of his passing, his wife came to us and asked us to represent the Estate. It’s a combination of people coming to us, people we’ve put out feelers to, and it’s a very close-knit community. Almost all of our photographers are colleagues of some sort. Sometimes to almost a humorous point. We did an exhibit once, and a photographer found out he was hanging next to another photographer, and he said, “Son-of-a-bitch, I hated him then, and I don’t want to hang next to him in your gallery.” So we moved the exhibit around a little bit.
JB: You did?
SM: We did. My wife likes to say “We work for them.” And that’s true. A lot of times they’re elderly, and we feel very privileged. It’s important to get their work represented, particularly while they’re alive, and to get prints made that will represent a legacy for the future.
JB: You developed a relationship with a network of photographers who knew one another, and as your reputation built, they came to want to work with you. But what about the collectors themselves? How did you develop a relationship with a network of people who wanted to buy these prints.
SM: It started very innocently. This is what we were passionate about. This is what we put on the walls. This is what we want to talk about. And it was slow going in the beginning. We had many times where we had exhibits up, and the established photo collector would be like, “Gee, I don’t know about your gallery,” and then they’d look at it, and they’d say, “But this is photojournalism?” And we were like, “Yeah, isn’t it great?” A lot of what we’ve done, is that we’ve educated people about photojournalism.
Moving to Santa Fe was very liberating, in a way, because in the New York art world, there’s a tremendous pressure. What’s hot? What’s the next big thing? More so in the art world, but it does also permeate into the photo world. So seeing old history on the wall isn’t very sexy. Moving to Santa Fe, there’s more freedom, it seems, of peoples’ perceptions of art in general. We’ve tried to create an environment where the photographs speak for themselves.
JB: So most of your collectors have been into the space? Are most of the people local to Santa Fe?
Photograph by Steve Schapiro
SM: No. We have a very wide base. Fortunately, having been in business in Manhattan for so many years, a lot of those clients follow us. Of course, so much can be done in the virtual world now. It doesn’t replace the experience, but certainly they can follow the imagery. We also do photo fairs in New York and Los Angeles. Often, it comes from the first conversation you have with a person about why they’re having a visceral reaction to a particular image. Being complete academic nerds, we can recite everything that was ever vaguely relevant about a particular photographer. It’s about cultivating relationships and knowledge. You touched on the retail model. I believe it’s an important model for a photography gallery. And by retail, I don’t mean retail selling.
JB: Well, that was my next question. Because we’re in downtown Santa Fe, and during the course of this interview, I’d say 25 people have already been into the gallery, and an additional 40 have been looking at pictures through the window. I think some people believe that people come in and buy things off the wall, and other people think that’s a fantasy. I was hoping we might be able to address, from your own standpoint, how it actually works.
SM: Personally, our goal is to spread the gospel of photojournalism, so getting the work seen by the public is critical. It’s a part of what we do, and another part is to educate. That doesn’t mean we preach, but I’m available to anyone who wants to ask questions, as we saw earlier, from mundane to serious. There’s no screening process of who gets to talk to me.
JB: Is that because we’re in Santa Fe? I wrote some things that were critical of some of the galleries in Chelsea for that reason. The approachability factor is nil. Here you’re talking about the fact that you’re almost perfectly approachable.
SM: That was our posture in New York. It’s just who I am and the way I work. It is bothersome sometimes, but that’s just the way it is. And I have to say that it has resulted in some incredibly long-term relationships with very important collectors. I think it’s a thing in the art world, and everybody has their model, and they can do it the way they want. But by design, I want the work to be seen, I want people to be able to ask questions. The retail model for us is that we’re open to the public, and we’re here to show photography. Both in New York and Santa Fe, we’re connected to schools, workshops, communities. Santa Fe is wonderful because of the Santa Fe Workshops, and Center as well. Many instructors bring their classes in here.
JB: You’re talking about retail as a way to engage with the public and have an exhibition space that enables the work to be seen. I’m curious, a bit, about the alternative way of viewing the concept of retail. The idea that people are going to walk in off the street, buy something off the wall, and take it home with them. As opposed to sales coming through built-up relationships over time. How often do you find that members of the public cross over to become collectors, as opposed to the public being appreciators?
SM: It’s hard to quantify, but obviously it’s a very small percentage. But just yesterday, a young couple came in and asked about a Margaret Bourke-White photograph we had exhibited seven years ago. They got married here seven years ago, and came back again on vacation. They asked about the photograph and they bought it.
JB: So it happens, but it’s the exception. It’s not the basis of your business.
SM: No. It’s not the basis of our business.
JB: Nor could it be?
SM: No. Nor could it be. Or should it be.
JB: Right, but in a sense, we’re talking about the exhibition divested from commerce. The exhibition is about getting the work seen, which is not that different from a museum or a public space.
SM: That’s exactly right. A lot of people, as they exit the gallery, say this is like a museum.
JB: As you said before, by design. You could be a private dealer with a small office, if you wanted to be.
Photograph by John Filo
SM: Absolutely. And we curate based upon our agenda, which is to tell a story. A lot of times, you get comments from the public, “How do you know which one’s going to sell?” Well, that never even enters into the equation. And on the flip side, there are a lot of times where we have controversial pictures that upset people, and they say, “Why do you put that on the wall?” Because it’s part of the story. It’s very important.
JB: It’s a perfect opportunity to ask, you’re opening your big summer exhibition called “History’s Big Picture” on July 1st. It’s not on the wall today, so I thought you might be able to tell us a bit about that.
SM: Curating is always interesting, because you’re juggling dozens of ideas. It occurred to us that this year is our 10th year anniversary in Santa Fe, during which time we built our photojournalism focus. And it occurred to us that we’ve got this incredible stable of photojournalism that we could curate from and make “History’s Big Picture.” The hardest part is editing, because we could do ten exhibits called “History’s Big Picture” and not duplicate any images.
JB: Really? How big an archive do you have? Given what you just said, how many pictures do you have access to?
SM: Jonathan, I couldn’t even tell you…
JB: Thousands?
SM: Thousands. We have archives in the gallery, we have off-site location here and in Manhattan, and we have our photographers who maintain archives.
JB: Sure. I interrupted, but you were talking about “History’s Big Picture.” As a curator, that’s kind of a broad theme. What did that mean to you?
SM: The pictures that tell the story of history. You have to edit your timeline for history, of course.
JB: American history?
SM: Primarily history as it relates to America. We chose 1930 as the starting point, and wanted to come as close to the present as possible. We have several images from 2006, 2007 and 2008.
JB: Am I correct that for the recent work, you’re showing Nina Berman’s pictures?
SM: She is fantastic. She’s somebody I’ve admired. For photojournalists today, they’re obviously working in a challenging environment, and a changed one as far as the media goes. In the heyday, you had vehicles like LIFE or LOOK, where that work was published, the photographer became known, and the public saw the work. In today’s media world, getting images shown is very challenging.
JB: You mean getting images seen?
SM: Yes, getting images seen.
JB: It’s a distinction we could probably talk about for an hour, but I think most people reading this will probably know the difference.
SM: Of course. The visual clutter that’s prevalent today. And the change of the economy of scale of the media. So Nina is one of the many contemporary photojournalists that I’ve known about, followed and admired. I wasn’t sure how we could show her work and do it justice, but in the context of this exhibit, I felt that we’ve got to have it. She was so gracious and accommodating, and it was an honor to have five of her photographs in the exhibit. We’ve got two from “Homeland Security” and three from the “Marine Wedding” series.
JB: Including the Ty Zeigler wedding portrait?
SM: Including the wedding portrait.
JB: Which I saw on the wall in New York last year, which led to the interview with Nina. So we’ve come full circle. That picture will now be on the wall here in Santa Fe all summer long.
SM: And I’m prepared. That picture’s going to elicit a lot of, I don’t know if controversy is the right word. But in the context of a public exhibition, in summer, which is high traffic tourist season in Santa Fe, the good side is obviously this show will get a lot of exposure. And the other side is that there are some very difficult photographs in this exhibit. But that’s history. That’s reality.
JB: Sure. Well, I know that everyone hates to be asked what’s your favorite, or what’s the best, or this or that. But I thought maybe if I put you on the spot, you might be able to pull out some old-school war story from back in the day that somebody told you that you still tell at dinner parties when you’ve had four glasses of wine.
SM: There’s a few.
JB: I’m sure there are many. But can you give us one?
Photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt
SM: One of my all time favorites happens to be about Eisenstadt. This was at an opening for one of Eisie’s shows. He was a small man, and he was very confident of his success, shall we say. So this was at a big opening, and lots of big collectors were invited. I had a collector who’d bought several of Eisie’s pictures, and he said he’d like to meet Eisie. I said absolutely, and he asked if his son could come too. I said “Sure,” and made the introduction. Eisie was always very gracious, but he didn’t like to hang out with people too much. So the man said, “Mr. Eisenstadt, I just bought my son a camera, and I told him, now you can take pictures like Eisenstadt.” And Eisenstadt just stopped and gave him this stare, and he said, “My dear sir, I have ten fingers, and I cannot play the piano like Horowitz.” At that point, I said thank you very much and escorted him away.
JB: It’s kind of dry.
SM: It’s very dry. There’s the face value that says anybody can take pictures. And it’s a very good point, especially nowadays, where everybody’s a photographer. It’s the topic du jour now. I’ve seen so many articles about it.
JB: Me too, so we don’t even have to go there. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask one more question. What advice would you give to someone who wanted to get into this part of the business? What do you think is the pathway into the gallery industry in 2011?
SM: First and foremost, it has to be your passion. Unfortunately in the world we’re in today, a lot of people glamorize the business. They think it would be so glamorous to have a fancy gallery, and it has to be your passion.
JB: So not everyone gets to blow lines with Naomi Campbell?
SM: No. But we had a great exhibit back in New York with a good friend of mine named Mick Rock, who’s really become quite successful now. He was known as the man who shot the 70’s. He did all the rock and roll photography. He was Bowie’s photographer and Lou Reed’s photographer. I got to know him, and I convinced him to do an exhibit. So when we did the show, we had Bowie, and Iman and Lou Reed hanging out. I would always say, “I’m never going to get rid of that desk chair,” because Bowie and Lou Reed sat in that chair.
But that’s not why you get into the business, is my point. If you’re passionate about the work, it will be rewarding no matter what, because you’re doing what you enjoy. And that’s the bottom line. It’s a job, and it’s work. It’s a fabulous job, and it’s fabulous work, but it’s a job.
If you’ve got the passion, the first step is to find your photographers. There’s a partnership between a gallery and the photographer/artist. You’re in it together. It’s not one or the other, it’s both. When I sell a print and call up the photographer to tell them, that’s a celebration we share. The next thing that follows is the relationships with your clients. And then you take it from there.
