Editorial photography is still finding its feet in the new normal and COVID was mostly a side issue. Its challenges are deeper than two years of dealing with lockdowns and social distancing. They persist. Some photographers are sailing through the upheaval unscathed. Adaptability is everything. Candide McDonald examines the year that was.
Editorial photography took a significant hit during COVID and has been slower to recover than its advertising sibling. This is partly due to the famed “democratisation of photography” with work spread over a wider range of photographers and especially so in fashion and documentary photography, where discovering new talent has become a trend. The report, State of Photography 2022, by Tara Pixley, Martin Smith-Rodden, David Campbell, and Adrian Hadland, found that 55% of respondents globally were supplementing their income with something other than photography and more than half indicating that they now carry a “great deal” to a “moderate” amount of debt. Female photographers have been especially affected. Close to a third reported a significant loss of income. 80% of the photographers who participated in the survey have been in the business for more than five years; more than a quarter having worked in photography for more than twenty years. 50.2% earned less than US$40,000 a year (after tax); just under 30% earned less than US$20,000 per year.
A curious year
New York photographer Michael David Adams commented: “In my experience, COVID took such a major hit on the editorial market and photography in general that many people have left the business and others are still working towards rebuilding. So many magazines have folded over the years and social media has also done a great deal of damage to the industry. I’ve shot a few art pieces over the last year and during COVID, while shooting minimal full editorials, as I knew the prospect of getting published was negligible until the industry came back in full swing.”
Manolo Campion found that being US expat in Australia was an asset. “It was a curious year indeed. We moved to Sydney from New York when COVID hit so it was the start of a new chapter personally and professionally. As far as editorial goes, I kept some of my editorial clients overseas, but also worked on getting new editorial in Sydney. So far, I have received commissions from Marie Claire, InPrint, Order Magazine, Jones magazine, Stellar, and Issue magazine. I also have some exciting new projects coming up so am feeling very positive.” Campion also shoots advertising work which he says helps pay the bills, but that editorial wok has its purpose. “I find that my editorial work gets my name out there and the ad work follows.”
Australian photographer Juli Balla says that 80% of her work is advertising, so that always pays the bills. “Editorial generally ends up costing me money personally,” she adds. “I subsidise my crew, as no decent operator or assistant would work for the rate magazines offer to pay. I do tests as well, which are totally self-funded. It’s really worth it, as these are the only true occasions when I am the king of my domain and can do totally what I want to do. This type of work definitely feeds the soul and expands your creative horizons. The time and money spent on these endeavours is never wasted,” she notes.
As a documentary photographer, Dean Sewell’s 2022 has been stable. “Neither pandemics, floods, fires, nor famine have much bearing on editorial commissions for me. It is always relatively stable, yet never quite sufficient to make ends meet. Of course, I have an uptick in work when such events happen. My primary employer of editorial work is the Sydney Morning Herald. They have a solid core of photographers able to respond to such above-mentioned calamities, but since the beginning of the Black Summer fires in 2019 followed by four consecutive flood events on the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment, I have probably done more work for the SMH in these years than the three years that preceded,” he explains. He also works for The Guardian (Australia) and Australian Geographic magazine from time to time.
The election and the ousting of Scott Morrison kept Sewell busy and in April he secured a good commission through Australian Geographic to produce a few stories in the Lake Eyre region in South Australia that took him away for three weeks. “This is about as good as it gets in Australia concerning editorial commissions as the days of three-week assignments have long passed,” he notes. Later in the year, Sydney Morning Herald commissioned him for a five-day story on the Northern Rivers cane industry that was heavily impacted by the floods. “This was also a great commission given what is around these days.”
The challenge of change
The most troubling thing that Sewell noticed this year, though, was bias. “If the Western media, including our own here in Australia, had any semblance of neutrality or objectivity left, then it was certainly trounced by these events as our media here has fallen in lock step with the Pentagon and White House press rooms. This should be highly alarming for our entire industry including editorial photographer, yet there is barely one single piece of discourse about this within our fraternity. You can’t step a single foot outside of the going narrative without being considered a Putin loyalist. Even my peers consider me a useful idiot these days and we no longer talk about the events over there. Twenty years ago, American foreign policy in my circles was a major discussion topic. Now, if you dare criticise the US, UK or NATO, you find yourself running from the lynch mob. You either ‘Stand with Ukraine’ or get shunned,” he says. Being shunned means being unpaid. “As editorial photographers, we are unable to monetise the work we do through independent platforms like Substack, which writers have been able to do very successfully. We are therefore almost totally reliant on mainstream legacy media organisations to make a living. So, you don’t have to think too hard to work out what that means.”
Hair and Make-up: Desiree Wise. Model: Alicia Davis/Kult. Retouching: Adam Hayes.
The editorial work Adams did this year paid for some of the bills, he says. Most of it was beauty and fashion. But during COVID he turned to building things for clients in the community. “I have always been a builder, from cyc walls to full studios, and I applied that building knowledge to items needed in suburbia, (we live right outside of NYC). I’ve made things for clients’ yards like planters, tables, decks, and patios, and other important things that were great for outdoor living due to COVID. This was a lifesaver during COVID since all of our work had basically stopped, but now it’s time to get back behind the camera more, get back underwater more, get creative, and have fun making images and videos.”
Making ends meet
Although it was a good year for her in general, Balla found that this year brought more of the same – more assets requested for fewer dollars. “This is due to social media mostly,” she says. “Clients need to be ever-present in ‘infinite’ platforms.” This is one of the trends she has noticed this year, albeit an ongoing one. “The editorials I have worked on seem to be more demanding in terms of the number of shots we need to achieve in the day. It used to be eight to ten, but now it’s twelve to eighteen, which is a lot when you consider that editorial is (or should be at least) a form of self-expression and you don’t want to be stressed out and under enormous pressure throughout the day. It’s a time for experimentation and you should be able to have fun with it,” she notes. “Deadlines are equally crazy. Shot selection and retouching turnaround is very quick, only a few days in total.”
Balla has also noticed that the difference between editorial and advertising is blurring. “It is quite common now for magazines to organise sponsorship for their editorials, with the brand being featured almost exclusively. This type of story used to be called advertorial, but they tend to sneak it into the realm of editorial now.”
Editorial photography never pays the bills, Sewell says. “I’m fortunate most years that people will purchase a few of my editioned art prints and the State Library of New South Wales regularly purchases images for its collection.” The library has been very active in buying work from the Black Summer fires, the pandemic, and floods. “Money from the Library collection funds has definitely kept my head above water over the past few years. And then there is World Animal Protection (WAP) Australia for whom I do on average a job or two a year. WAP is one of the last NGOs here that properly funds critical issues. I've worked with them on campaigns to end captivity of animals for entertainment, ocean plastics, ghost nets, and the expansion of crocodile harvesting in the NT for ludicrously priced handbags.”
Hair and Make-up: Desiree Wise. Model: Holly Brown/Chic. Retouching: Adam Hayes.
Directives, be damned
The idea of prescribed style trends seems to have disappeared, Adams says. “I’ve seen a wide variety of styles this past year, from straightforward with clean lighting to creative experimental lighting and even super creative artistic shoots. I feel as though the industry is all over the place, which is understandable. One thing that is very obvious is that video is taking over everything and stills are becoming secondary to that,” he adds. For Campion, trends are outside his vision. “Stylistically, there are always trends that pop up, such as reverse vignette, flaring the lens, flash on camera, adding blue to the shadows, etc. I don’t pay attention to them as they come and go quickly. I do, however, think constantly about how to move my own photography forward, staying true to my own aesthetic.”
Dream Downtown hotel in NYC for Metropolitan Luxury magazine.
Sewell has noticed a definite generational change of guard in progress, particularly in his genre. “Documentary is a huge umbrella term that is constantly expanding under burgeoning practice and semantics. There would literally be thousands of photographers who identify with this term in one way or another,” he explains. The younger generation, he adds, is highly educated and perhaps university trained, uber ambitious, conscientious, and highly entrepreneurial. “They are creative, well presented, have a solid embrace of technology and public relations, are diplomatic, politically correct, and in many cases, somewhat apolitical – the total antithesis really to when I entered the world of editorial documentary photography.”
The old way of working no longer holds in his genre. He explains, “Outside of commissioned work, my modus operandi is still from the turn of the century, when you could take off for a week or two with nothing but your cameras and research under your belt, execute a project and then pitch the completed work – and make double the money than what is possible today. This business model of course is archaic and is no longer economically viable in the contemporary media ecosystem, and the emerging class of documentary photographers are already savvy to this. Instead, they are more likely to have a commission stitched up before they walk out the door with a highly crafted foresight that unmade work will be turned into a photo-book or exhibition, and with their network of friends and writers in the cultural sphere, editors, gallery owners and global festival organisers to ensure maximum exposure across multiple platforms. This of course will all be incorporated into a highly choreographed and sophisticated social media blitz. The emerging generation can therefore be defined by a holistic approach supported by an expansive skill set and entrepreneurial headspace. My generation crawled out of the darkroom and across the road into the pub.”
All in all, 2022 wasn’t a surprisingly challenging year. It was another challenging year. For Adams, COVID still played a role. He explains, “The most challenging thing for me this year, and the last three years, has been managing my daughter’s schooling. She is going into third grade now, and the last few years have been a mountain of challenges with a dysfunctional school district, COVID, and other personal things that have made doing much of anything else near impossible. I’m looking forward to her having a more successful year from here, and being physically back in school will give me the opportunity to focus more on photography and directing.”
Campion “created” his own challenges, he says, by relocating. “My greatest challenges had to do with getting used to a new country and the slightly new ways of working that come with the move. Meeting new stylists is always an important part of my work so that has been a major part of the year. In general, I find that jobs in Australia leave more room for creativity, so I’d say that has been a gift. In the US, I find that the corporate nature of the industry often over-plans the shoots, leaving very little room for experimentation on the day of the shoot.”
Sewell sums up this year with a quote from yesteryear. “The famed Czech-born Australian photographer Anton Cermak would often quip, ‘Look out the window. Sky is blue. Sun is shining. Birds are singing – c*** of a day.’ In the current media climate, it’s pretty hard not to hear the words of Anton ring in your ears from time to time. Every year is a challenge and every year throws up a whole new set of hurdles. But the greatest challenge by far, and forever ubiquitous, is that of funding. I have several stories always present in my mind, but never the means to pull them off. Some linger for years while I try to concoct a scheme to fund them, and then some just never get done.”
Contacts
Michael David Adams – michaeldavidadams.com
Juli Balla – juliballa.com
Manolo Campion – manolocampion.com
Dean Sewell – www.oculi.com.au/dean-sewell
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