Musings of Then
I promise I’m not an old curmudgeon. But as I go through the years riding the highs and lows of being a freelance creative, rose colored glasses never helped anyone move forward. Of this I’m certain. I’m taking a look back at an industry that is no longer, but has no idea what it’s changing into. Here’s the story…
Watching a recent interview with Linda Evangelista, I thought back to when I was growing up. She mentioned people telling her that they’d tear out her photo in a magazine and it allowed them to dream. It’s an odd thing to say, but I suppose I was one of those people too. My Gen X generation looked to the magazines for inspiration. We had the best magazines with the best photographers working with the best models and stylists and creating the best ad campaigns. It was our aspiration and for good reason. So much money was thrown at these jobs, and they were as valued as they were valuable.
It’s been widely noted that the steps of our career trajectories and the final destinations we desired don’t seem to exist anymore. For most young people today, their professional worldview is driven by social media algorithms, regurgitated Instagram formulas, and quantifiable likes. Recently, a friend told me a story about a young girl she knew who wanted to become a makeup artist. My friend said she’d introduce her to one of the most famous makeup artists who was something of a legend back in the day. The young girl looked at her and said “well, how many followers does she have?”
It puts into perspective the power and importance that an image held back then, as opposed to now, when photography has been devalued to the idea of content, something that by nature is formulaic and disposable. Back then, there was a barrier to entry, often a rather impenetrable one, where photography was not only an art that not everybody had the talent to achieve, but a technical skill that not everyone could learn and understand.
It made me question what is success nowadays? I’ve said many times the creative industry is a dumpster fire, from the fine art photography world and the closure of galleries, to the publishing industry’s “sensitivity readers”, to the writers and actors strikes which affect a whole employment ecosystem beyond just actors and writers. The shock and offense that we used to crave have been paved over with a religion of political correctness, as seen in mandatory diversity quotas that are placed before talent and vision, and the cancelling of great writers the minute someone disagrees with them. It seems that no one on either side of the coin can do anything right, and that has stripped artists of their most essential need, the freedom to create.
So what makes an artist successful now? Follower counts? Clicks and views? Back in the heyday of print, there were enormous budgets allocated for creativity, as when something is highly valued, the money follows. To be published in a well regarded magazine was an aspirational destination, but nowadays doesn’t hold the weight it used to. It would be logical for me to go down some anti social media rabbit hole, the kind which brought scorn upon bloggers who started sitting front row at fashion shows just before social media really took off. But riding the nature of change instead of fighting it, the question becomes existential.
The same day, I read about the official end of Departures Magazine. This was a Bible back in the day to anyone who loved travel, great photography and insightful journalism. It’s sorely missed. I read each comment of the announcement. It was unanimous that after the print edition had folded, no one gave a crap anymore. No one wanted another email list about “How to score that first class upgrade” or “Best cafes in Paris you need to go to NOW”. Come on, it’s garbage. And the viewership shows it.
What defines success now? As Chiara Segatel, my fellow photographer and near life long friend, puts it… “Success equates to freedom, free from trends, follower counts, and embracing a vision free of the obsession with scalable results. Talent is elusive. There’s too much hyper focus on vapid and empty productivity, pursuits of templates and formulas, and the total absence, aware or otherwise, of freedom. The shortening of the attention span, the flattening of the learning curve in favor of fast formulaic results, and the whole idea of content exists to fill proliferated containers”. I couldn’t agree more.
On the flip side, I see independent journalists today being more crucially important than ever, with new technology supporting them. I see unknown artists that are incredibly good, but with hardly a “following”, peeking out of the woodwork. I see fellow photographers in a disoriented state saying Well we might as well focus on shooting what makes us happy. In the end, I think the real creatives are pausing and looking inward now. And the hope I have for a real creative and intellectual revival, free of follower counts and polarized narratives, sticks around and says Turn off your phone and live your life. It was the only way to make it back then, and in a world that continues to change without a compass for navigation, the direction it gives is still as relevant as ever.
