This month I went to India. It was meant to be a possible work adventure. I was to shadow the tutor and next time take my own group of student photographers/holiday makers on this trip. Well it sounded great but in reality, didn't work out but was an amazing chance to see a country I'd never witnessed before. Immense poverty which made me a little uncomfortable to be a 'rich' westerner. All westerners are rich in their eyes. Very sad and brutal, yet visually awesome. Everything is a potential photo opportunity. Albeit mostly a clichéd one. Everything has been shot a million times so it is important to try and look with alternative eyes......I've had some wine so this may not make a lot of sense.
Zebra One gallery (Hampstead, London)
Meeting David Bowie
I have banged on about this for years. Check out the story on here : davidbowienews.com
Memory makes me happy
I have just received 25 lovely 8 gig memory sticks with my website printed on the side! What a great idea for delivering images to my clients!!!! (not to mention a couple of last minute Christmas gifts I've forgotten) They have a keyring loop too!!!!!
I got them from www.usbmemorydirect.com.......... never thought a memory stick would cause me pleasure!
This may not be the MOST exciting post ever.......but hey, it's my blog! :-)
EU - Let's stay in for gods sake!!!!!
The first time I've pretty much ever agreed with Bob Geldof..............but don't let old people decide the fate of the young! Old nostalgic people..........let's not lose what we've built over so many years. God knows what we'll get if we leave. NOBODY knows..............I'm gonna leave the country..........no wait...........I won't be allowed in anywhere.
Alt. Portraits in a book!!!!!
In May this book comes out....you should all rush out and buy it!!!!
Copyright issues AGAIN!
This time Placebo management. I was informed a few days ago of my images being used to sell their 20th anniversary tour. When I contacted them they apologized offering that they knew not who had taken the pics. It was Placebo's FIRST front cover..............you'd think they might remember (or be able to research)
Anyway they offered me a small amount of money and I required more so they took it down. Even though the tour is 37 dates long and will gross somewhere between 4-6m, they wanted to pay me £13.50 per date........
You should go along if you're a fan of whiny alt rock
New name check (Foos contract)
From the Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jul/14/newspaper-challenges-foo-fighters-photo-policy-sending-cartoonist-cover-gig?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Facebook
An open letter I didn't write.......
The Economy of Ignorance
Here's a nice piece by JOHN MACPHERSON
http://www.duckrabbit.info/2015/04/the-economy-of-ignorance
Last word....................on this debate
Please allow me to introduce myself: I'm Pat Pope and I'm addicted to reading negative comments and abuse hurled at me on the internet. For the sake of my own sanity, this is me going cold turkey.
Last week I made the mistake of writing one of those Open Letters you hear about. I wrote it in response to a request from Garbage's management company that they'd like my permission to use a photo that I took and I own in a book they intend to publish and sell for money. But they'd like to not pay me. Since it went out on the internet it's caused a huge debate, and within that debate I've been called a "whiney weener", a "shitty douchebag", and an "egomaniac", and I've been encouraged to "watch your back" because "we will find you". I found it quite hard to read those comments, not least because I'm English and I'm not sure what two of them actually mean. For the sake of balance, I've also been described as an "internet warrior" and someone who is "standing up for the little guy", so it wasn't all terrifying, some of it was just a bit mad. But I need to get back to my life now, so I'm turning it all off. This is my final and only comment on the whole debacle, and I just want to use it to clear up some misconceptions.
Why did I write an Open Letter?
There's been a lot of criticism of me making this public, with some saying I should just have quietly refused permission. There's three reasons why I didn't do that.
1. People think this is a one off request for special dispensation from one particular group of artists just trying to make one specific project happen. It isn't. I receive hundreds of these requests a year, as does every other photographer I know. This is the new normal - writing down a budget in which you'll get the photographic content for free by making the photographer give it to you. How will you make them give it to you? By quietly abusing the power relationship.
2. The Power Relationship. Garbage stated in their response that they "humbly requested" the use of my work for an "artistic collaboration". To be clear, Garbage didn't contact me at all. Garbage paid someone at their management company to send me a pro-forma request for free usage of my work. When you receive a request like that, the power relationship is that a gigantic branded entity with huge reach and backing is asking a lone freelancer to accept that the value of their work is zero. Your two choices are to give them the permission, valuing your work at zero, or to refuse permission, in which case they will quietly remove you from the list of freelancers they work with so you won't get any future work. This has happened to me time and again when refusing or granting permission. If Garbage don't understand that this is the nature of these requests then they need to spend less time reading Amanda Palmer and slightly more time investigating how power and control work.
3. When writing the original Open Letter I honestly believed that Garbage probably didn't know that this was happening in their name. I've met and socialised with the members of the band on several occasions. I remain a fan, not just of the band but of the artists as people. When I wrote the letter I genuinely expected that this would be an opportunity for them to step forward and stand up for artists. I know hundreds of people working in the creative industries would have stood alongside them had they chosen to do that. To be honest, I sort of regret choosing them for the Open Letter format because of their response. It wasn't my intention to embarrass them or accuse them of anything; they're great people, we just disagree on this which I'm disappointed and surprised by.
Why does any of this matter?
We are living in an age where content service providers and the public have unwittingly collaborated to reduce the value of creative content to zero. Companies are happy to sell you an expensive shiny device that sits in your pocket giving you access to limitless creative content. They conspire with other companies to create services that will deliver that content to you for free. The public unwittingly colluding with those companies to ensure the service providers and the device makers are getting paid while the artists are not. Take your device out of your pocket and go on to Google, Facebook, YouTube or Spotify right now. You can see dozens of photos I own accompanying thousands of pieces of music played by your favourite artists, and none of us are getting paid. The creative community has become used to these companies' complete disregard for the content creators. I wrote the Open Letter to Garbage because the very least we can do, as an artistic community, is to refuse to adopt their methods to undervalue our own work, artist to artist.
What can we do?
I'm no "internet warrior", and I'm certainly not applying for the job as figurehead for any campaign demanding this or that. But I do know that all of us in the creative community have to Stop Working For Free. Musicians, photographers, videomakers, illustrators, animators, writers, journalists, filmmakers, actors, dancers and composers; these people have to be able to make a living doing what they do, and all of us have to support each other to Stop Working For Free. There's a Facebook group for that run by people who know more about it than me. Join it: https://www.facebook.com/groups/263804607094399. The next request you receive for some free content, write your own Open Letter. Let's get this practice out in the open. When the budget for your next project gets put in front of you, ask where the money is for the artists. All the artists.
I'm Pat Pope, and I'm a professional photographer. In my career I've been fortunate to work with Bowie, Lou Reed, Radiohead, Oasis and Garbage. I'm incredibly thankful for the opportunity to use my skills, training and the time and money I have invested in something I love doing around people I respect, but this is my career.
Like Garbage, I sometime choose to collaborate with artists who don't have a budget to work with me; in the last two years those bands have included Joeyfat, Ugly Love, Slaves, House On Fire, and Tom Williams. You should check them out.
Like Garbage, I sometimes choose to donate my time to charities; my two personal choices are Rhythmix (their Wishing Well project puts music into hospitals for sick children, it's amazing http://wishingwellmusic.org.uk/) and Taylor Made Dreams (who enable life limited children to achieve their dreams, again, incredible https://www.facebook.com/pages/Taylor-Made-Dreams). You should definitely donate to them.
Unlike Garbage, I think the work of artists, including my own work, has a value that is at least equal to everything else being done in a commercial project, and I'm not prepared to reduce the value of it to zero by giving it away.
Stop Working For Free. That's my final word.
www.patpope.com
Letter to Garbage
An Open Letter to Garbage
Dear Shirley, Butch, Duke and Steve
I don't know if you will remember me, my name's Pat Pope and across a few years in the nineties I worked for you as a photographer. That's one of my photos of you accompanying this letter. I worked pretty hard on that photo - actually, throughout my time as a photographer I hope I've always worked hard to make all the artists I've had the opportunity to shoot look as good as they can.
Today I received an email from your management company Big Picture Music Co. It's a very nice email, and in it they announce that you're working on a book about the band which you plan to self-release next year. The email says that you really like some of the photos I took of you and would like to use them in your book. It also says that in return for the use of my photos you will give me a "proper credit" but that given it is planned to be a self release the budget is "financially limited", by which your management company mean "we're not going to pay you". So I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, and I wanted to do it publicly because I think it's important that people know what your answer is. I don't expect as many people will see this Open Letter as Shirley's recent message to Kanye West, but I think it's important we know where you, as artists, stand.
Q1: I'm a firm believer that musicians and artists deserve to be paid for their work. I'll sign any petition that's out there supporting that concept, and even when I choose to stream rather than buy, I'm one of the fans of your band that will pay for a premium service because I think you should be paid. That's my point of view. Is it yours? When you think about artists being paid, does that include photographers? Do you think "content providers", whatever the hell that means, deserve to be paid for their work, or is that a special category for musicians? If I want to release a music album, can I use your music in it if I give you a "proper credit"?
Q2: If you're putting together a book, presumably someone at your management company or somebody in the band has written a budget. And if there's a budget, somewhere in that budget, against the line for "use of photos" somebody has written "no need to pay, we'll just give them a proper credit and get them for free". Against all the other lines, for writing, for printing, for distribution, for retailing, for marketing, for the management company, for the band, for Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, somebody, somewhere, working for you, has written a number down because that's what it costs. But that same person has written zero for photos, because that content, in their opinion, they can get for free. Who is that person? As a band are you happy to be employing someone who thinks like that? Because it seems to me that the person who writes down "zero for photos" today is the same person who will write down "zero for music" tomorrow because they don't respect the "content providers".
By writing this open letter, I'm obviously committing professional suicide when it comes to ever working with you again, and probably it won't do my reputation any good within the music industry to be seen as troublemaker. Obviously that worries me, but it worries me more that musicians and others are saying one thing publicly about the needs for artists to be paid for their work whilst privately people working for them are doing exactly the opposite. I'm not accusing you personally of being hypocrites, I don't know how involved you are in this process, but I'm letting you know it's happening and it's happening in your name.
So, very respectfully, .......no.
No, you don't have my permission to use my work for free. I'm proud of my work and I think it has a value. If you don't think it has any value, don't use it. I'm saying no to a budget that says you can take my work for free and make money out of it.
Thanks, and still a fan of the band
Pat Pope
www.patpope.com
PS: Just so you know, this is actually an improvement on the management of your "Absolute Garbage" album where the record company just used my work without even asking. I only found this out when I went into a shop and bought a copy, which, when you think about it, has a certain irony.
Big in..........Brazil!
On Friday I had a session with one of Brazil's biggest acts, Jesse n Joy. At time of press, this video has 278,169,564 hits............
Mexican brother and sister act who I last photographed for their previous album campaign, four years ago. I was assisted by the talented Jake Davis (Hungry Visuals)