Photo cooperatives and collectives have thrived for decades as a way to share resources (e.g. accounting and marketing functions) for like-minded photographers. But in the past few years, a palpable shift has occurred. Many contemporary collectives aggregate niche or marginalized groups of photographers, and provide a showcase and directory for photo editors to reference.
Sarah and Allen examine the pros and cons of approaching photography through the lens of a potentially unknown "insider" vs the the more traditional method of using the "tried-and-true" photographer. The answer isn't always clear, but collectives are an important part of the photo ecosystem.
Photo cooperatives and collectives have thrived for decades as a way to share resources (e.g. accounting and marketing functions) for like-minded photographers. But in the past few years, a palpable shift has occurred. Many contemporary collectives aggregate niche or marginalized groups of photographers, and provide a showcase and directory for photo editors to reference.
Sarah and Allen examine the pros and cons of approaching photography through the lens of a potentially unknown "insider" vs the the more traditional method of using the "tried-and-true" photographer. The answer isn't always clear, but collectives are an important part of the photo ecosystem.
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photo shelter presents vision slightly blurred. I'm Alan verbiage.
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And I'm Sarah Jacobs.
spk_0: 0:05
Hey, Sarah.
spk_1: 0:06
Hey, Alan. How you doing? Okay, good. Good.
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We're talking about collectives today. Collectives? Sometimes they're co operatives. Sometimes they're collectives. Is that business difference there? But do you know what one of the first collectives waas
spk_1: 0:26
can, I guess. Okay, we collect collectives or Coop cooperatives? Yeah. It was technically a cooperative. It was technically cooperative. Okay, I guess I actually don't know the difference. Can we back up and explain that? So I
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believe that, you know, maybe I should have researched this. I believe the difference really comes down to the cooperative being kind of a huh. A situation where every member of the cooperative has a share in a voting right within the affairs of the cooperative. Okay, where's the collective? Is just kind of. There's not necessarily like a legal organization behind it. It's just like
spk_1: 1:09
we're part of a collective. Okay,
spk_0: 1:11
We may or may not pool our resources to do things like market ourselves together. There might be somebody that we there may or may not be someone that we hired to be our admin assistant or our lawyer or whatnot, but there isn't a cooperative. That's that's typically why they're set up in the first place for legal and distribution. You know, there's a there's a fee to be in the collective. You get disbursements, okay? And they take a piece of your your profits.
spk_1: 1:37
Okay. Okay. Got it. So now you're asking me, What do you know? I'm not sure
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whether it was the 1st 1 of the big first co operatives,
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was it Magnum?
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It sure waas?
spk_1: 1:50
Yeah. Forties, right, 1947 to 47. So what Different history? Yeah. So they got
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together in part because they wanted to make sure that they retained their copyrights, in part because they wanted to be able to sort of market and build a brand under Magnum. So that photographer here would be known as a Magnum photographer. And there's a certain level of off quality that was, uh, that people would associate with the brand and also to just pull their resource is together and say, Okay, were you know, they'll be a president of Magnum, and they'll be somebody that deals with the billing because we don't want to do with the building
spk_1: 2:33
right you know,
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there's there's practical reasons for the cooperative or the collective to exist.
spk_1: 2:38
Yeah, like they had somebody licensing their images on their behalf, too, and like a whole administrative staff, which is pretty cool. So back in
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the day, you know, going back to these Magnum F 64 some of the the collectors and co operatives in the seventies eighties nineties and even early two thousands. In my opinion, we're much more about the business, the business of photography and collaborating. The resource is together so that they didn't have to worry about the logistics of the business and to be able to create some marketing muscle that I think has really shifted in the past five years or so.
spk_1: 3:19
Yeah, let's say within the past, like maybe three, or to
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be more accurate. Yeah, Who are you talking about?
spk_1: 3:26
Well, it's interesting because as we were researching a for this episode, I immediately thought of women photograph, and I thought of them as a collective, Um, because there is ah, standing website where you're able to go and be able to see the female photographers or female identifying photographers that are on their roster and As I was doing more research, I was like, Well, wait a minute. Is this a collective or is this just a website that promotes these photographers? Do you know what I mean? Like, are these Are all these women like working together or are they not? So to answer my own question, while women photograph does put on initiatives such as like grants and they do have a mentorship program, Um, there's not any collaboration. I don't think outside of those things with the members or the people that are we pressured anyone calling members the photographers that are featured on their site. From what I can gather, I think
spk_0: 4:31
that's accurate. You know, I think the the reason why women photograph came into existence was there was this conversation in the photo journalism industry about why there were so few women photographers that were represented on the cover of magazines and the newspaper A ones. And one of the responses, if I'm remembering correctly, was, how do we find them? What's the resource is sort of aggregate all of these great women photojournalists together. And so Daniela's Altman is a founder of Women Photograph said. I'm creating that directory.
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Yeah, Danielle.
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Um so it became kind of a model, I think for many of the collectives and or issue oriented directories that followed, it s so there's one called native access. That's all about Native Americans. Um,
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there's diversify photo
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first, my photo.
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There's authority collect well, collective. That one is a more formal collective,
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which is, ah, lot about LGBT. Q. I think there's a lot of trans photographers that are shooting trends, issues that are part of that collective, and so that it's been a super interesting shift. And I think we've talked about in in other podcasts episodes where photographers have become very, uh, advocacy based carrying about a specific issue. And I'm seeing more and more photographers saying, Okay, let's What's the gay version of women? Photograph? What's the You know, what's the black version? What's the Latino version? What's the Asian version? In part because there they don't feel like there's enough representation in some of these more mixed environments. And I do think that editors are paying more attention to saying Okay, if we're shooting a piece in Asia, I don't have to fly out this white photographer there. There's a guy that literally is happening in his backyard or her backyard or their backyard and tire them to shoot. There's an economic reason to do that. There's also just up a point of view. Reason to do that, right?
spk_1: 6:44
Yeah, Yeah, I think a lot of her photo editors air realizing that like the strongest work comes from photographers that are documenting their own experiences and their own communities and having their own voice through the photos. I mean, that completely changes your approach to your subject matter.
spk_0: 7:01
So do you think that, for example, a white guy from the U. S shouldn't be shooting a trans story in India? No, No E s report. Answer.
spk_1: 7:18
I don't Yeah, no, I think I know you can. Absolutely, e. I think it's appropriate to send somebody there, but somebody that has experienced within the LGBT Q community is going to approach that story in a different way than someone who is straight just point blank. So
spk_0: 7:42
I think one of the big criticisms that I've seen over the years is that the problem with and other shooting a story So, you know, uh, we'll go back to this example of the white guy from the US going into a foreign country shooting like a trance story. The problem isn't that he's incapable of doing it, but often times he's going to see something that he considers to be exotic because he's never seen it before and put an emphasis on it that isn't accurate. For the people that are living that experience right. Being an outsider leads your eye in a certain way. Makes you believe that the stories in one direction where maybe in another direction Yeah, and I think that's kind of the rial. That's the risk of like having the outsider cover a story.
spk_1: 8:33
Yeah, there's also like a sensitivity that that person might not understand or bring to the table that someone who has lived the experience would, And I definitely think that there is in some cases benefits toe having this quote unquote outsider go and photograph a story because it might bring a fresh new person different perspective. Or they might be seeing some point, something that someone that's so ingrained in it just didn't even notice. But for something, as for a topic, is sensitive or what can be a sensitive is something like Trans rights, for example. That's when you don't. That's when you don't want to send somebody that has zero life experience within that world. I think it has to be. If you're gonna send an outsider, it needs to be something that's sort of like not politicized. Not like sensitive. Not a sensitive topic, You know what I mean?
spk_0: 9:28
I've seen editors make the argument of, you know, there's this big event that's gonna go on, and I need to know that my guy is gonna get the shot. So I'm going with a guy that I've worked with before who I know isn't gonna call, call up and say I lost my passport has been in enough novel situations that they can get this shot and that I can rely on that person. Whereas I don't know this this photographer in the Philippines like, I'm not gonna hire this person cause I don't know who they are and their portfolio. It doesn't show me what I need to see. How do you feel about that?
spk_1: 10:05
Yeah, well, that's toe has a photo editor. Fortunately, I have not dealt with disclosure. Full disclosure, but, um yeah, You want to be able to rely. Okay, you want to be able to rely on your talent, right to get the shots that you need, Um, but I think that's that brings it back to the collective's. That's why these collectives air so important because they're proving their rosters are proving that there are gonna be people wherever you need them, that are talented. And do you have a good portfolio and are capable of getting the job done?
spk_0: 10:40
Women photograph did kind of a year in photography at the end of 2018 and it was like many urine photograph galleries in terms of aggregating these stories together, they did two things that were very different. Number one. Everyone who submitted was a ah woman or identified as being female and number two, instead of relying on a single editor to say, These
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are the
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photos that I bookmarked throughout the years. And so now they're part of my year in photography because it's a It's a daunting prospect called down hundreds of thousands of photos into like, you know, the 20 best. What they did was they said to everyone in the collective submit us your best photos and then our editor will go through, which meant that stories that might have otherwise been for gotten had one more chance to be seen by the editor before it was published. And I actually wrote a piece on the photo shoulder blogged about it.
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That's how it
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felt so different, visually, visually and also in terms of like the subject matter that was covered in a very, very palpable way. To me like that to me showed the rial reason. I wouldn't say necessarily genius, but it showed a real reason for this organization to exist. And even if you take the woman component out of it, I love the fact that they did a cattle call for, like, what? What should be the best photos of the year?
spk_1: 12:09
Totally. Yeah, because again it kind of goes back to, like the photographer's know they know their archives. They know what they did. They know what what stories struck, stuck with them that they had shot that year, and Soto ask them point blank like What's What's the best photo? I mean, I assume that there was a lot of photography within that year in that where they were. The stories were not publicized a lot, right? Is that the case? You know, I would
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say that because I've done sort of urine photograph, Yeah, Indians before.
spk_1: 12:41
Yeah, me, too.
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And you tend to remember just the big event happen. Or maybe there's a one or two photos that go really viable viral during the course of the years. You remember those taking this approach means that the smaller stories could be heard. I will also say, um and and I I asked Mallory Benedict, who was the editor on this piece, whether it was totally off base, but it struck me as being, ah, more tender urine photos. The typical year in photos it's photojournalism based usually has blood. Yep, gunshot wound fire fire, people on fire on fire, people screaming. Yep, whereas this particular year and photos sort of devoid of that. It was like we're on the block over and things are still bad, but this is what's going on. It's not the guy being hacked into 20 bits, right? It's like the aftermath of the guy being hacked into 20 bits, and I found it so refreshing because the whole sort of disaster porn style of photography it's sort of pointless. Yeah, yeah, pointless to me. So I like, I like what the collective's air doing. I also think that they occupy a specific point in time where there's a lot of conversation around the value of diversity and the need for diversity. There's a lot of people that say, Well, a photo of photos should be able to stand on its own. So who cares? The color of the skin of the photographer, the gender of the sexually, you know, preference of the photographer. And yet when you see these collectives put together and you see the images you understand, like there actually is a different point of view, there's a reason for them to exist. Maybe if we're lucky a generation or two from now, we won't need these collectives, and they'll sort of have run their course. But I don't even think we're even close to that point. You
spk_1: 14:37
know, I don't think so, either, and I think they're great that they exist as a resource. For example, authority, collective and diversify came onto my radar when they released last summer. There, the lit list, where it was 30 up. Incoming photographers that you should hire now that are people of color and women. Um and I mean, I just I bookmarked everyone and I hired somebody off a list, you know, it was just like, this is a great resource for me and for every photo editor to be going to.
spk_0: 15:08
There's so many photographers. So obviously you can know everyone, but it's sort of shocking to find a photographer who you never even heard of before seeing like a major body of work on a subject that you've never even considered and been like what, especially when they're in your backyard. Totally. You're in Brooklyn or you're in SoHo and you're doing all this great,
spk_1: 15:30
totally as a person who loves photography. That's like my most favorite discovery. If someone's like, Oh, follow me on Instagram and I don't already follow them like Oh my God! So
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knowing that women photograph isn't a collective or a cooperation sense, does it? Does it sort of diminish the impact?
spk_1: 15:48
Well, yeah, I was for a second. I thought so, but then I was like, No, they do these like amazing grants. They're giving their giving women and female identifying photographers not boatloads of money, but good amounts of money to get projects off the ground that for stories that need to be told that otherwise art and like it's a great website and resource. What more do in 2019? Kind of like, What more do you need?
spk_0: 16:13
I see these collectives as fulfilling, like almost a marketing roll. Uh, it's a marketing rule that that maybe was previously occupied by photo contests. But people have such icky feelings about photo contest, right? But here's a way where they're building brands behind the name and their aggregating, all of the this specific type of photographer with a specific type of content and then building marketing muscle around that, it seems like a better way to get notoriety for the photographers.
spk_1: 16:48
Totally. Yes, 100% agree, because many of
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these photo cod's S
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I know who needs condos and who needs to be splitting their profits with other photographers.
spk_0: 16:58
Well, that's a good point to that, you know, although I do think that there's there's a valid reason toe have a photographer not have to worry about chasing down building like on these Facebook art of
spk_1: 17:11
Yeah, it's
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like every week there's like I have a client in Europe, and I don't know how to get paid. And you haven't learned yet. Like, you need to request the money up front for European clients because they don't play, They don't pay. Yeah, So I do have this for paying a little bit of your profit to outsource some of these things so you can focus on your photography, but
spk_1: 17:32
yeah, but as a collective, I save money. But by splitting those costs, I certainly
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think that there's a There might be a business idea in there where it's just a business function from photographers, like a collection agency, but not taking 30 40%. It's like we'll take 10% and maybe you pay an annual fee and you get accounting service is or something like that. I don't know. I don't know.
spk_1: 17:58
Yeah. What's your favorite? Do you have a favorite collective? I No, I don't. No,
spk_0: 18:03
no, no, no. The one thing you know, we mentioned the f 64.
spk_1: 18:08
Oh, yeah,
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before And yeah, you know, going back in these different eras. So what I read on the Wikipedia page. I haven't done a really academic deep dive into this thing. Lucky dot com was that they were. They were trying to position photography from a realist point of view. Yeah, because photography prior to that was very like
spk_1: 18:31
it. No, the pictorial. They were like against the pictorial conceit. Pictorial? Yeah. Like version of photography. They were very They were purists, you know. Yeah. It was like Edward Weston and Ansel Adams and Imogen Imogen Cunningham.
spk_0: 18:47
So there's always a a point of view as toe for these different eras, like a Really? Yeah. It's in the way that the collectives and co operatives air are put together.
spk_1: 18:56
Yeah, totally. I just want to note that F 64 existed before Magnum, but in 1937 I believe, but I'm but that was almost just like a like a club, like a like a collective group of thinking like, Yeah,
spk_0: 19:11
but that's how it was back in the day. You have physicists hanging with each other in Vienna, having coffee, talking about black holes and stuff. And so then the photographers wanted to copy that, too.
spk_1: 19:23
That's true. Yeah, you know,
spk_0: 19:25
there were a lot of salons back in the day where people would come together and for the French, the French salon.
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Okay, we're talking about
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conceptually. No, there was no slack chat back then. So people actually had Thio person to talk about these concepts,
spk_1: 19:46
right? You couldn't like g g mail, everybody.
spk_0: 19:49
You're not texting. It's the message. All right, people, I think we've decided that they're not technically collectives or cooperatives, right there. Really kind of online directories in some ways, but they're fulfilling a vory, I think a sorely needed function of aggregating specific types of photographers to address both inequity within the industry, as well as providing a point of view that hasn't traditionally existed because we've been going to sort of the same the same photographers to shoot everything kind of around the world.
spk_1: 20:28
Yeah, totally. I agree. These these resources are very valuable.
spk_0: 20:34
So whether or not they will last another decade or two or with whether they will outgrow their their usefulness remains to be seen. But I think we're both kind of pro. 21st century e
spk_1: 20:47
feel like that needs any name, but But for the time being, quarter growth cocked collectives. Yeah.
spk_0: 20:58
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