The Art and Business of Photography

Susan Carr

• Publisher: Allworth
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781581157796
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Arti performative e business

Photographers now have the ideal resource to build a solid foundation for success. The Art and Business of Photography takes an honest approach to the photography profession and is a guide to the artistic and business skills that are the foundation of a career in photography. Professional photographer and former ASMP president, Susan Carr, discusses the realities of the photography industry along with the struggles of expressing creativity and producing quality photography. Topics in this distinctive guide include the balance of being an artist and a business person, the basics of copyright, pricing skills, how to find future prospects, and the importance of craft and creativity. Firsthand experiences and sample photographs by top photographers--pursuing various photography subjects and different types of clients--serve to enhance the unique combination of art and business included in this book. This volume also covers the history of the profession and the current state of the industry. Anyone with a love for a photography and the creative process will benefit from this realistic yet inspiring approach to the photography industry.Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

PART I

ART AND COMMERCE

“Shooting a picture is holding your breath as all your faculties focus on capturing fleeting reality; then taking a picture becomes a moment of great physical and intellectual delight. It is a matter of putting your brain, your eye and your heart in the same line of sight. It is a way of life.”

—Henri Cartier-Bresson⁵

Chapter 1

ART

All photographers have a “falling in love” tale to tell about how they came to image making. The ability to capture, interpret and share moments in time holds an undeniable power and, consequently, there is a steady flow of people drawn to this medium. This initial obsession frequently evolves into a desire to make this skill a vocation, but what does it really mean to be a photographer? What separates the hobbyist from the professional? The easy answer is that a professional is someone who generates income from photographic labors, but I feel that is too simplistic. I think Leslie Burns, marketing consultant to photographers, articulated it best when she stated clearly, “the difference is intent.” True professionals have purpose behind the work they create; whether a photographer is fulfilling an assignment or producing art, the intention is guiding the work. The work is deliberate, the craft is honed, and the results are delivered. This work cycle is repeated with passion and persistence.

Throughout this book, I will share my own experiences and those of fellow photographers Richard Kelly and Sean Kernan. I invited Richard and Sean to participate in this project because our photography backgrounds and our clients are extremely varied, providing a depth of perspectives on the topics covered. We do share a steadfast commitment to photography as creative expression and an equally strong desire to continue our work as photographers. Each of us believes that the art of seeing is a way of life and we want that to thrive, both for ourselves and for others.

For me it started in a high school photography class. The thrill of seeing an image I created come up in the developer tray grabbed me immediately and that passion has never waned. Art was my favorite school subject, but finding photography was a gift, an indefinable pull at an early age.

Richard Kelly discovered photography even earlier, after buying his first camera at thirteen. His parents made it clear from the start that they would not subsidize the film, paper, and chemistry he needed to keep making pictures. Consequently, at a much younger age than most, Richard needed to find a way to support his new habit and approached his hometown newspaper, The News Tribune in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Too young to drive, Richard’s mother was his means of transportation to and from these first photo assignments. From the start, Richard has rather seamlessly combined art and commerce by using his skills to generate income in support of his passion.

For Sean Kernan his introduction to photography came after college. After studying journalism and then working in a small theater company for three years, Sean decided to take a summer off to tour Europe. For this trip, based on the advice of friends, he purchased a camera to record his journey. Along the way, he discovered his camera was more than a tool for documenting scenery. Sean found that seeing and photography were becoming one creating, for him, a new way of communicating that was very different from the theater. Theater was constantly high production and hugely collaborative work, and although Sean enjoys that process, the camera provided him a “low production” way of expressing himself. He found this immensely satisfying and he was hooked for life.

We live in a world of images. Frankly, we are inundated with them. Turn on your computer, your television, your cell phone, walk down the street, ride a bus, or open a magazine and there is a constant flow of images before our eyes. Photography has, from its beginnings, been available to and used by both professionals and amateurs. Since the Kodak Brownie, anyone can create a photograph regardless of the operator’s skill or understanding of how a camera works. Today, the speed of digital imagery combined with the ease of distribution made possible by the Internet has exploded the number of images out in the world.

Some photographs are used to sell a product or an idea, others are created for news reporting or event documentation and many more are simply being shared for the fun of it.

One result of this abundance is a more visually literate culture than was the case in previous generations. It is now readily acknowledged that imagery can both educate and manipulate. Photographs can evoke emotion, reveal a truth, and also lie. Furthermore, an image’s importance is frequently not measured by any standards of craft or creativity, but rather by impact. Remember the images from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq? The quality (or lack of quality) of these photographs has nothing to do with their continuing resonance. This occurs when the subject matter trumps artistic merit. Dramatic or horrifying subject matter, however, is not what makes up the typical everyday photograph. For professionals, the concern of this book, our role is more frequently to unveil what is special or unique in the flow of everyday events. Cameras literally record, making photography inherently tied to subject matter. The photographer brings a point of view to the process and, therefore, for the artist, subject matter is only the starting place.

Consider Lewis Hine’s photographs documenting early twentieth century child labor. These images facilitated the introduction of child labor laws in the United States and have become an important record of this period of American history. The social impact of Hine’s images is undisputed, but the subject matter is only one ingredient of the lasting value behind this work. Hine’s masterful compositions draw the viewer’s attention to precisely indicate his concerns. His portraits of children in these harsh work environments reveal an intimate connection between the subject and the photographer, as well as a deep, haunting sadness. Hine’s vision pushes these images beyond photographic record making and speak to universal truths about the human condition.

Lauren Greenfield explores the social and personal life of American girls in her 2002 published book, Girl Culture. Greenfield expertly employs a raw journalistic style and produces images that are bold, honest, and intensely intimate. Again, we see an artist exposing harsh cultural realities, but through her vision and tenacity the photographs move far beyond sociological study and become artful expression.

And now think about Aaron Siskind’s photographs of ripped posters and graffiti. This series takes the subject matter out of context and transforms it into exquisite formal compositions. The strength of this vision then evolves further to express competing emotions of tension and tranquility. Siskind’s subject, vision, and composition coalesce and bring lasting power to this work. Together these elements create something more than the sum of their parts.

Marilyn Bridges creates aerial photographs of ruins in Peru, Egypt, Greece, Britain, and the United States. Her image, Arrows Over Rise, Nazca, Peru is a breathtaking landscape photograph that not only describes the location but also transforms it. The composition draws you in by forcing a circular visual movement as you grasp the scale of the scene, and then the markings of an ancient culture are revealed jetting through the vertical center of the image. The quietest visual component, and subject of the image, suddenly takes on an undeniable power. Bridges elegantly describes her process: “By consciously maneuvering the aircraft in such a way as to place light and shadow in relationship to material forms, I control the shapes and patterns within the photograph. By maintaining the relationship between tone, shape and texture, the gesture evoked by the symbolic nature of the subject is reinforced. If all this works, then the photograph is alive and meaningful and not merely a record of the charted landscape.” A well-seen photograph is, as it has always been, the most powerful communication tool available.

A photographer finds distinction in our visually saturated society through the pursuit of personal vision, refined through the practice of unwavering persistence. The art of seeing is perfected by the act of working. I had the privilege a few years back of hearing photographer Ken Josephson speak at the Society for Photographic Education Midwest Regional conference. While discussing his own struggle with blocks in creativity or direction, he clearly stated his own mantra, “work begets work.” You must be dedicated to finding your own vision and, to do that, you must make the photographs. There is no easy button to push in becoming an artist, and there is no one size fits all formula for success. It is personal and it is work.

The critical connection between an individual’s vision and the lasting value of their work is expressed by photographer and writer Robert Adams: “Making photographs has to be, then, a personal matter; when it is not, the results are not persuasive. Only the artist’s presence in the work can convince us that its affirmation resulted from and has been tested by human experience. Without the photographer in the photograph the view is no more compelling than the product of some anonymous record camera, a machine perhaps capable of happy accident but not of response to form.”⁶

I remember the first time I recognized that my work could reveal more than the subject before me, in other words, the first time I realized I was an artist. I was staying with a friend in Chicago, as I often did prior to moving there, allowing myself days to photograph the city I was so enamored of. Brian was yelling down the hall of his apartment something about dinner and I was photographing candlesticks on his living room windowsill. The hot summer air was blowing in the window and the last light of the day was sculpting the candlesticks. I answered his question and simultaneously photographed the scene that had caught my eye. It was seamless and natural. I put the camera down and went to dinner. Weeks later in the darkroom, when I printed the image the entire event was replayed in my mind. The experience had been mundane yet the image staring back at me in the developing tray was somehow much more, I had successfully transcended the everyday event and had made the moment a personal expression. What part of myself had taken that picture? How could I repeat it? It was a powerful realization and has become the yardstick by which I measure the success of my work. It is a sort of calling, the creation of images that are more than mere description. The search for the next transcendent moment is what drives the artist in all of us to keep photographing.

A structured project is the vehicle most photographers use to achieve creative growth. We find our vision through the act of photographing, but we articulate our message through projects. Every photographer has single monumental photographs, but a series of images revealing depths of an idea is the true lasting product of our labors.

Projects are discovered through the acts of working, seeing, and staying open to possibilities. Sean Kernan describes in his artist statement that his Secret Books project began when he was cleaning up his studio and simply picked up an old book and looked at it in a new way. “On an impulse, I went to the closet where I keep a compost heap of props and got four black Japanese river stones and set them out carefully in a line across the pages of the book. And suddenly it looked to me like … a poem … I took a picture of this poem. And that was the beginning of these books.”

Sean clearly states the importance of this notion: “I’ve come to think that empty presence is the state an artist needs to be in when a great project hits. I’d suspected this for some time, that art begins in presence and is followed by thinking. My Secret Books project solidified that forever.”

Similarly, the beginnings of my Personal Spaces: Details of American Homes project grew out of a non-photographic event: a family visit to my aunt’s childhood home in Mississippi. Her mother, Mildred, had lived in this beautiful bungalow for decades and it percolated with personal history everywhere I looked. I walked around, took a few photographs, and left haunted with the notion that I had to find a way to get inside more homes like this. I was fixed on the idea that home interiors were my new subject matter, so I formalized the plan making forty years the marker for minimum occupancy and strategically reached out to family and friends for help. With no work to show, the owners of my first few home subjects opened up to me simply because of their trust in the family member or friend who had made the request on my behalf. Once I had work to show, the introductions were a little easier, but I still relied on the graciousness and trust of these homeowners, nearly all of whom I never met until the day I arrived to photograph the details of their lives. Beyond my own family and close friends, fellow photographers quickly became my biggest resource for new home material. This camaraderie of my colleagues not only made this project possible, it serves as a meaningful lesson in the value of photographers supporting each other.

Richard Kelly shares that working for Art Kane was his alternative graduate school. “Art was not a technical genius. He was a creative genius. He would give me drawings and say, ‘Figure out how we can do this.’ He gave me lots of freedom. I had my own office and access to any of his equipment. He paid for my film and processing. He encouraged me to shoot and test. We had a standing meeting every Monday morning to review my work. I had to produce new images every week for these critiques. Art was very direct and hands on, never letting me get away with not following through on an idea.” Richard credits Art for teaching him both discipline and the importance of pursuing authentic projects.

Richard’s Artists and Scientists project grew out of an assignment he was doing for the University of Pittsburgh. He photographed Dr. Manzi and Dr. Ahearn to document their research work on Lupus. “When I met these two scientists, I realized that being a scientist was like being an artist. The struggles were the same creative struggles photographers and artists go through. How does the eureka moment happen? I also discovered that many of these scientists were also painters and musicians. I have always created portraits of artists and now I expanded to scientists and this project was born.” From cleaning up a studio to visiting family to completing a commercial assignment, the seeds of these significant projects came from unexpected places.

The process of developing a project does not always happen as a result of one event or realization. It can, and frequently does, take time and patience. An example of this is a body of work I call Intimate Landscapes. At the time I started this project, I was feeling completely vacant of a personal direction for my art. I was consumed with growing our small studio business and had not given my own work any substantial time or energy for quite a few years. My business partner, Gary Cialdella, gave me the path forward by suggesting I simply spend concentrated time photographing for myself. He kept reminding me not to worry about “what” I was photographing or “why”—that I should just photograph. I followed this advice and set aside a week at a time to walk old Chicago neighborhoods and photograph. The work evolved and took root after extensive travel, photographing, printing, and editing. The series resonates with a blending of history, architecture, and the given moment. The resulting work is a series of poems, deeply personal and full of memory.

The key to the pursuit of art is to push yourself to freshly look at all of your images, identify your genuine interests and concerns and when the spark of a project idea hits, run with it. There is rarely a shortage of ideas, but there is a deficit in photographers willing to do the work of finding and executing projects true to themselves.

Chapter 2

COMMERCE

Creating a viable way to make a living from your art is a huge undertaking. Photographers often measure their business success against the commercial photography industry prior to the explosive use of the Internet and digital imagery. But what is frequently referred to as “the good old days” was really a very brief period during which the profession matured, the number of photographers was small, and the demand for our product was growing. Furthermore, it depends on who is speaking what period of time is actually being referenced. The picture magazine era of Eugene Smith is something I hear many photographers long for. They want those photo essay assignments for which you could spend weeks sinking your teeth into one project. Yet these photographers frequently worked for little money and had to fight for the rights to their work. Others are referring to the relatively stable and lucrative commercial photography era of the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, when advertising budgets were on the rise and large format color transparencies were the standard. This period was not only short lived, but advertising agencies were (and still are) a difficult and fiercely competitive market to break into. Neither era guaranteed success or lasted for very long. This young industry is constantly evolving and to more fully understand the challenges that face us today it is useful to take a selected survey of our history as it relates to commerce and follow that with details on how Sean Kernan, Richard Kelly and I entered the field.

From Medieval guilds, to Renaissance academies, to church and state patrons, to modern academia and individual businesses, the creators of art have consistently survived by applying their talent to some sort of commercial endeavor. Ironically, “art for art’s sake” has been the prevailing mantra in university art departments over the past fifty years. My own art education shunned direct commercial use of art. The consensus, at the time, was that doing work for clients “hurt” your own work, polluting it somehow. The absurdity of this approach seems obvious to me today, some 25 years after graduating with my bachelor’s degree. In the absence of other supporting income, one must make a living doing something. In addition, for artists to fully realize their goals they must make a living in a way that allows time, energy, and resources to create their personal work. Utilizing a specific craft to generate income not only perfects skills, but also yields freedoms of time and money necessary for the creative process to thrive. Being an artist and making a living from your craft do not have to be mutually exclusive; on the contrary, I believe they strengthen each other.

From the beginning, photography and commerce have been linked. Artists Nicéphore Niépce and Louis Daguerre, along w...