Intrinsic Value
Trawling through the ProPhoto archive for our regular ‘50 Years Ago’ panel is always interesting, but sometimes it can be very revealing. For starters, change seems to have been a constant, forcing working photographers to adapt and adjust whether they like it or not. New technologies have been behind a lot of it virtually from photography’s earliest days, but so have the economy, changes in tastes and fashion (particularly noticeable in portraiture and weddings) and disruptive events such as wars or pandemics.
For many of us ‘of a certain age’, it’s hard to top the transition from film to digital for bringing fundamental change to just about every aspect of professional photography from pressing the shutter button to pricing. However, it’s likely every generation of photographers would be able to tell of the challenges of their time, and the impact they had on their practice and business. And, at many times in the past, the very survival of the profession has been questioned. The good news is that, so far, all of them have proved to be wide of the mark. But there’s no doubt things are very different from what they were 50 years ago… or even 20. For a variety of reasons, it’s now much harder to make a living from professional photography and, anecdotally at least, there are many more part-timers than ever before. The devaluation of the market has been going on for a long time, linked – it has to be said – to the lack of concerted and cohesive efforts to sell exactly what it is that professional photographers actually do. This has become steadily more critical as digital imaging technologies solved the technical issues that had once been a key separator of the snap-shooter and the professional. For a long time, professionals relied on charging for time and materials without putting a price on what they actually did with them in terms of creativity and skills.
In the July-August 1971 issue of what was then called Professional Photography In
Australia, there was a response to yet another article in the general media that compared the prices charged by a professional photographer for a colour print versus those of the local pharmacy using a high-volume photofinisher. This was a popular topic during the 1970s and ’80s, even more so when the in-store minilab enabled pharmacies to sell the standard postcard print at under 10 cents (and with a one-hour turnaround too). The point was made that a professionally-produced photo print was clearly worth much more than the paper it was printed on. But even as these invalid comparisons continued on and on, there never seemed to be any thought of developing a more effective industry-wide strategy to counter them rather than a miffed letter to the offending newspaper’s editor. Once professional photography mostly stopped using physical materials, commercial and corporate clients started questioning what they were getting for their money… well, just look what I can do with my new digital camera. The question that really needed to be asked back then was, what price do you put on the value of creativity? It’s still the case now and, of course, it’s not easily answered, but ideas, vision and experience have to be at the heart of professional photography’s value today.
In this same issue of Professional Photography In Australia, contributor Eric W Spargo wrote about the increasing technical capabilities of amateur cameras, even the humble Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid’s latest “automatic box”.
“Will professional photography ever become a lost cause?” he wrote. “Perhaps this is too gloomy an outlook, as obviously there will always be a market for quality photographs. There will always be work around for us, although the competition will become fiercer… It seems certain that in the future we will have to take greater pains to give the client what he wants, and probably at a price he is prepared to pay.”
Forgive the masculine emphasis (there were plenty of female photographers around in 1971), but you get the point. Perhaps more interestingly though, Spargo concludes, “Above all, it is vital for us – the professional photographers – to retain an interest in our vocation as a craft and science, and not just regard it as another way to make a dollar”.
If we add passion to that mix, then surely professional photography can survive whatever upheavals it has to surmount.