December 19, 1998

Around this time last year I wrote that one of my goals was to find out how photography fits into my life.

Last month I took a trip with my dad for three weeks, just the two of us, leaving hearth and home, and a fairly busy freelance schedule behind. During the summer, I didn't go on vacation. I had built up a reputation of availability and was happy to be on call and working. But the upcoming trip was both a retracing of steps for my dad, of journies he had made with my mom when she was alive, as much as it was a much needed break for me, and a reunion with friends in Europe I hadn't seen in many years. I did not go without some trepidation, however at leaving a career which was gaining momentum.

Just before I left, I heard that one of the assignment editors was moving to another desk. The new assignment editor didn't know me well; in fact, our last conversation was one time last summer when he was editing film for the next day's paper and went something like this:

"OK, Markisz, let's see if we've got a page one," he said.

Gulp.

Two days before my flight, the new assignment editor took the helm. I had to pick up some film and decided to check in and say hello. I re-introduced myself, welcomed him to the desk and told him I'd be away until the end of November, but would call on my return. When I told him where I was going, he said he loved mail.

So, I wrote him postcards with something short and humorous from nearly every city in Europe I visited. I even found a postcard with a nighttime Weegee-esque spot news photograph of a famous fire in Venice. On it, I wrote, "Weegee was here." Clever me!

The day after I returned, I called the photo editor and said that I was the crazy lady who had sent him all those post cards... and that I was back! He said: "Ah, so... you are, aren't you?" (I wasn't sure whether he meant 'I know you're the crazy lady' or ...'I know you're back!')

Four weeks later, I've gotten no assignments from him. The good news is that I have gotten assignments from another editor, but every time I see the new assignment editor in the office, I think he must wonder what I'm doing there! He looks at me with a big grin and that "you again" look! I'm desperate to find something humorous to say to him, but I think I'm simply desperate.

Any change in management is bound to affect employees. But staff employees for the most part have a certain amount of job security. Even under the best of circumstances, before I left, work was unpredictable, but I felt I knew where I stood. As a freelance photographer, and because my husband and I are both self employed, our health insurance is something like $9,000 a year; no one is making a contribution on our behalf to our health benefits or to our retirement.

And so it is with a new year approaching, I still have no answers. It's disconcerting at best to think that I should consider a job doing anything else. But realistically speaking, I think almost anything else must pay better than this, without the ground continually shifting underneath. So, while I'm still not sure where I am going, I have two cents worth of advice for aspiring young newspaper photographers, many of whom email me frequently about career choices and college majors.

I'm not a terribly cynical person but I am increasingly disappointed with the choices available to photojournalists. So, to someone considering a career in newspaper photography I'd say the following: Go to school and study everything. Learn how to run a business and market whatever skills you have. Take pictures. Take every business course you can get your hands on. Study the world. Become fluent in one or more languages. Study anthropology. Learn to write and write well. Take international studies. Spend a year or two studying abroad. Take more pictures. When you've studied everything else, study photojournalism---photography---as a minor. Be a shameless self promoter (bearing in mind, of course there might be better ways of doing this than sending postcards from Europe to prospective editors!) If you're passionate about taking pictures, learning the technical part is easy; getting a job and making a living at it is not. And if you become educated and skilled at many different things, it might be possible to make a living at it.

It's not a bad thing after all, to be able to discuss the Yanomani,(which you studied in your junior year anthropology course, wondering what the heck you'd ever need this course for)... with the guy who just won the Nobel prize for his monographs on the subject, and whom you've just been assigned to photograph.

Susan B. Markisz

December 19, 1998