I don't want to get in a mudslinging contest about the future of photojournalism but with all due respect to John Freeman's counterpoint essay: An Academic View of Photojournalism Education and Donald Winslow's The Future of Photojournalism, I would like to add my own two cents worth as a freelance photographer grappling with some of the issues mentioned and the feedback which both essays have generated over the past weeks.

For those of you who have never read my lengthy bio originally posted last year on this website, I'm a late bloomer to photography. I was fortunate to have discovered it ten years ago in my mid thirties, just before a cancer diagnosis. I came to photojournalism somewhat circuitously, with a mid seventies degree in foreign languages and linguistics, having lived and worked abroad in various fields of communication, in the midst of raising two children, but with no less ambition and enthusiasm than a four year photojournalism graduate, and perhaps with a little more life experience. I had been taking pictures all my life. But when I discovered photography for real, or when it finally discovered me, I felt that I'd finally found what I was "meant" to do. I took every course I could get my hands on, studied lighting, and did unpaid internships. I listened to anyone who would teach me and I got my first break getting published in my weekly newspaper, for $15 per picture, where I went from developing TriX in D-76 and making Ektamatic prints, to scanning negatives and making digital files for reproduction in recent years.

During the past year, in this forum, I've written no fewer than 37 journals, many of them passionate accounts of recent assignments as a contributing photographer for my weekly community newspaper, and as a freelance photographer for a New York daily newspaper. I love what I do and I think it has been reflected in the stories about which I've written.

To wit: on this website, over the past year, I have written about what it's like to take a picture of a young firefighter, John Usai, only to learn days later he died of a massive heart attack; I've written about coming home from a weekend away to have a local merchant call me at home to ask me to please take pictures of his burglarized store...as he breathed a sigh of relief that the pictures I had given him of his son, whom I had photographed years earlier for an article we'd done, were not taken by the thieves. I've written about the simple and the sublime. I've written about graduations and celebrations; I've written about what it's like to be a 10 year breast cancer survivor, (Art.Rage.Us. The Art and Outrage of Breast Cancer) and how photography has helped to save my life; I've written about kids in the local park and kids battling leukemia. In virtually every assignment, I've been fortunate to come away with something far greater than simply an image. I've come away with stories of strength and courage and the privilege of having an inside view of someone else's life.

Professor Freeman asks about "job satisfaction - and the thrill of having your work displayed on the front page of your community's newspaper." In fact, there is no dearth of such stories that tell about our passion for the profession and how people have had an impact on our lives. Read Tom Burton's "For more than a month, it hasn't rained more than a spit in Central Florida," Lara Hartley's "Dead bodies have blue feet," Mark Hertzberg's "Delgado, in his orange county jail jumpsuit, had tears streaming down his face," Joe Jaszewski's "Let's go knock on other people's doors and meet them," Lynn French's "Sick but feeling good," Dick Kraus's "It still hurts after all these years," Mark Lent's "Every once in awhile you come across someone while covering a story that changes your whole life," James Keivom's "I learned Hey Jude and then watched a man die half an hour later," and Donald Winslow's "I'm always touched at how quickly people can lose their lives."

Professor Freeman took to task Winslow's" lack of love expressed toward the gathering of photographic images and their distribution." I believe, however, that he was simply being dispassionately objective about his view of the state of affairs of photojournalism, pessimistic though it may seem. Depending on one's definition of success, and if the measure is solely job satisfaction, then by all accounts, most photojournalists are successful. If by some chance, one includes Webster's definition "favorable or prosperous course or termination of anything attempted," then there is reasonable doubt.

Thrill doesn't pay the bills. I won't argue that when The New York Times publishes my pictures larger than life, 12 inches across the top of the fold and it's the ONLY picture top of the fold, I'm seriously happy (an oxymoron perhaps, but apropos of the instant gratification of the moment.) My family knows I've got bragging rights for a day. For a split second, I have the illusion that I'm a decent, maybe even better than average photographer. But I'm not rising to the top of my profession when my day rate is exceeded by the expenses of maintaining the car I have to use to do business.

When I got a flat tire in Brooklyn last summer on the way to my third assignment of the day, in my non-company car, I had to wait three hours for someone to come out from behind the bullet proof gas station to sell me a tire, because my spare, it turned out had been stolen. Triple A told me: "We don't do your shopping for you lady," when I said I simply needed a tire, not a tow... my day rate was eaten up by a three hour wait and a $100 bill for a new tire. This is a reality of my business.

When another photographer tells me how an editor, years back once refused to pay his asking price, for a spot news picture he had taken, and was told: "Take it or leave it, I know housewives who will do it for less," (and I'm the housewife he's referring to, though thankfully, not his, who was "paying the proverbial dues",) I wonder where the respect is for my "profession."

Professor Freeman asks: "Why do arguments bemoaning the future of photojournalism always have to center on money?" and "When did photojournalism stop being a profession and start becoming a business?"

When wire services and newspapers start disseminating contracts that not only strip a photographer of his or her property rights, and do not pay daily rates commensurate with the marketability of their images I wonder where the respect is for my profession.

When the National Press Photographers Association, of which I've been a member for several years, not only censures and reprimands its members for naming the parties in the aforementioned dispute in on-line discussions, but also refuses to take a stand on the issue, in defense of photographers' rights, I wonder where the professionalism is in the association, and I wonder what the point is, of membership, if the benefits thereto, do not actively support photographers in their demand for copyright of their images and wages reflective of the demand for images.

When I have to pay my son's college tuition bill next year, which I anticipate will be in excess of 25 grand, and I'm not earning that much, I wonder why I'm in this profession, because Professor Freeman is right: it's NOT a business. Nor does it seem to be a profession, with a liveable income and reasonable benefits .

Several people wrote me after my journal last year called "Postcards from Europe" which was a tongue in cheek account of what happened when I came back from a trip with my dad, to find a change in editors that effectively left me out in the cold. Some applauded me and said I was valiant to write what it was really like. Another said that I ought to get off my keester and stop feeling sorry for myself. They were both right and wrong. I don't want sympathy. I want work. From my vantage point, photojournalism does not appear to be a self sustaining profession. My point is that the work simply isn't there in traditional news media. This statement is not meant to garner sympathy. In New York City at least, where one would expect it to be a mecca for news gathering, it is simply a fact that there are more talented news photographers than there are full time jobs. This means that if you don't have a staff job, you are continually pounding the pavement looking for work, and spending a lot less time making images, whether it's photojournalism or some other field of photographic endeavor such as commercial or public relations work, which in most cases is necessary to supplement our incomes as news photographers.

When images are valued but not the imagemakers, I wonder where the professionalism is in the business. I don't know that the answer is to stop turning out enthusiastic college graduates who, before marriage, children and taxes, can afford to take a $20,000 a year job anywhere in the country. More power to them if they can live on that income in the year 2000. In the mid seventies, that was my starting salary in an unrelated field.

No fewer than three people called me in a twenty four hour period last week to compliment me on pictures I had taken of them for the local paper. On that same day, I received a letter from someone who had taken the time to write me at the New York Times to say how much they liked pictures I had done while on assignment a few weeks earlier. It was what one would call a "banner day." I would be lying if I didn't say I was thrilled and didn't think that momentarily that I might be on the right track after all. On days like that I defer my decision yet again, to get a job doing almost anything else but photojournalism.

But when our quarterly payment of our annual $10,000 health insurance comes due and our $4,000 car insurance for two drivers, our mortgage, maintenance, phone, pager---and we haven't eaten dinner yet, well... you see where I'm headed here. I'm proud of what I do, I love what I do, and I consider it a privilege to cover what is both the mundane and the magnificent and come away with a sense of fulfillment. But the realities of making a living dictate that it's time to reassess the profession.

Behind the Viewfinder - A Year in the Life of Photojournalism
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