Heather Faulkner — Photojournalist

It’s a good thing Annie Leibovitz kept copyright on the thousands of images she has taken over the past 3 decades. The economic crisis has hit hard on the creative community. The Sydney Morning Herald posted this story: “Leibovitz pawns life’s work in a scramble for cash,” last week. 

More and more often, photographers are offered contracts for work that take away the copyright from the photographer and give it to the commissioner. These contracts come from newspapers, magazines and commercial clients. If they’re nice, they let you keep the right to photocopy (huh?), show the work for portfolio or maybe, maybe, publish it in your own book. Back in the old days, when you could keep a job with a newspaper until you retired, it wasn’t such a bad trade-off. Because they also gave you a pension. 

But there are no more pensions in these lean times. Nor are there many full-time jobs. Instead, we work jobs – day contracts, casually arranged for the benefit of the commissioner, not the photographer. They don’t pay our insurance. They don’t pay our medical. Some won’t even pay for travel, or only partial travel expenses. Oh, and they don’t pay for our equipment.

$50,000 is what it takes in equipment to operate independently in Australia. It guarantees you enough equipment to shoot anything from rugby to fashion, fires to floods. It also depreciates 25% a year. It’s a tough business.

This grab for rights isn’t happening because the visual is a cheap, over-abundant commodity. It’s happening because the suits have realised that pictures are worth something. Unlike words, images gain value as the years roll on. They become icons, symbols of ourselves, symbols of our pasts. They are priceless.

Unlike words, images gain value as the years roll on. They become icons, symbols of ourselves, symbols of our pasts. They are priceless.

For years older, wiser freelancers have been warning the young up-and-comings to never surrender copyright. How many have heeded that call? It’s difficult to pass up a casual freelance contract when you’ve got loans to pay on your equipment, your rent is due, your car is leaking oil and your kids need to be fed, clothed and educated. The grab for copyright is literally blackmail. Slave labour. 

Imagine if Leibovitz had naively surrendered copyright for all those images she had made, before time developed them into the iconic records of the late 20th and early 21st century that they are? She’d be broke. Too many photographers are broke because they trusted in the system. 

Ask yourself, who is paying your retirement fund? Who is going to bail you out of economic hardships? 

——————————

Lastly, another economic tragedy unfolded last week. The Rocky Mountain News, one of the very best newspapers in the US, has closed its doors just shy of its 150th birthday. The Rocky was the leader in North American photojournalism. And they kept on reporting till the end. This should never have happened.