The PICTURE PROFESSIONAL, Autumn 2015

ISSUE 3/2015

THE

QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PICTURE PROFESSIONALS

PROFESSIONAL

The CO LOR issue

TABLE OF CONTENTS ISSUE 3 / 2015 THE PICTURE PROFESSIONAL

© ANDRE ROSA

© CHRYSANNE STATHACOS

© IRWIN WONG

COVER: Tibetan Grandmother, Dharamsala, India, January, 2001. Taken at a photo shop on the road to His Holiness The Dalai Lama’s Temple. © Chrysanne Stathacos.

5 PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE 7 EDITOR’S LETTER 8 WHAT’S HANGING 36 SHOOTING FOR DIVERSITY

by Brooke Hodess

PORTFOLIOS

44 Q/A: STOCK POT IMAGES

by Katie Buntsma

12 CHRYSANNE STATHACOS All the Colors We Cannot See

by Michelle Weidman

48 THE LAW: RELEASES 101

by Nancy E. Wolff 52 CAPTURING THE COLOR OF CUISINE

by Kimberly Phipps 54 CHAPTER CAPTURE 59 BOOKSHELF 63 CONTRIBUTORS 64 LIFE IN FOCUS

by Rajiul Huda Dipto

20 IRWIN WONG Cool Is Skin Deep

by John W. W. Zeiser 30 ANDRE ROSA The Drag Queens & Covered Bridges of New Hampshire

by Josh Steichmann

American Society of Picture Professionals

Since first forming as a small, dedicated group of picture professionals in 1966, ASPP has grown into a large community of image experts committed to sharing our experience and knowledge throughout the industry. We provide professional networking and educational opportunities for our members and the visual arts industry. If you create, edit, research, license, distribute, manage or publish visual content, ASPP is the place for you. Join us at www.aspp.com.

LIST OF ADVERTISERS age fotostock akg images Art Resource Association Health Programs Bridgeman Images Curt Teich Postcard Archives

MASTHEAD

Da nita Delimont Stock Photography Debra Hershkowitz Disability Images Granger Everett Collection

Sovfoto/Eastfoto The Image Works Travel Stock USA Vir eo/Academy of Natural Sciences Visual Connections

The Picture Professional quarterly magazine of the American Society of Picture Professionals, Inc.

ASPP EXECUTIVE OFFICES 201 East 25th Street #11c New York, NY 10010 Tel: 516-500-3686 director@aspp.com

2014-2015 NATIONAL BOARD OF DIRECTORS

2015-2016 CHAPTER PRESIDENTS

PRESIDENT Cecilia de Querol

West Christopher DiNenna Tom Wear

EDITORIAL STAFF

VICE PRESIDENT Anna Fey

Publisher Sam Merrell

SECRETARY Steve Spelman

Editor-in-Chief April Wolfe

TREASURER Mary Fran Loftus

Art Director Mariana Ochs

MEMBERSHIP Robin Sand Anita Duncan

Copy Editor Debra P. Hershkowitz CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Nancy E. Wolff John W. W. Zeiser Josh Steichmann Michelle Weidman Katie Buntsma Brooke Hodess Kimberly Phipps

EDUCATION Susan Rosenberg Jones TECHNOLOGY Mayo Van Dyck MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS Lisa Vazquez Roper

The American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP) is a non-profit, non-partisan association of image experts committed to sharing their experience and knowledge throughout the industry. The Picture Professional (ISSN 1084-3701) is published spring, summer, fall and winter as a forum for distribution of information about use, purchase and sale of imagery.

ASPP is dedicated to promoting and maintaining high professional standards and ethics, and cooperates with organizations that have similar or allied interests. We welcome the submission of articles and news from all sources, on all aspects of the imagery profession.

Contact editor@aspp.com Advertising is also desired and welcomed. We offer a specific readership of professionals in positions of responsibility for image purchase decision making. For our media kit and rate sheet, contact Sam Merrell, director@aspp.com (or 516-500-3686). Space reservation deadlines: February 10, May 10, August 10, November 10. Subscription rates: Free to mem-

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Fundamental Photographs Minden Pictures MPTV images North Wind Picture Archive Robert Harding World Imagery Science Source

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Midwest Christopher K. Sandberg New England Jennifer Riley Debra Lakind New York Darrell Perry DC/South Cory Lawrence NATIONAL BOARD OF TRUSTEES Cathy Sachs, Chair Andrew Fingerman Michael Masterson Chris Reed Amy Wrynn Helena Zinkham

ADVERTISING & EXECUTIVE OFFICES Sam Merrell Executive Director director@aspp.com EDITORIAL April Wolfe editor@aspp.com NATIONAL PRESIDENT Cecilia de Querol president@aspp.com MEMBERSHIP Robin Sand Anita Duncan membership@aspp.com WEBSITE Sam Merrell director@aspp.com Tel: 602-561-9535 eNEWS BLOG newsletter@aspp.com

bers, $40.00 per year to non-members. Back issues: $20.00 when available. Non-members are invited to consider membership in ASPP. POSTMASTER: Send old and new address changes to ASPP, Inc., Attn: Merrell, 201 East 25th Street #11c, New York, NY 10010. Members can update contact information and mailing addresses in the Member Area of our website at www.aspp.com. © 2014 American Society of Picture Professionals, Inc. Single photocopies of materials protected by this copyright may be made for noncommercial pursuit of scholarship or research. For permission to republish any part of this publication, contact the Editor-inChief. ASPP assumes no responsibility for the statements and opinions advanced by the contributors to the Society’s publications. Editorial views do not necessarily represent the official position of ASPP. Acceptance of an advertisement does not imply endorsement by ASPP of any product or service.

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE CECILIA DE QUEROL

DEAR ASPP MEMBERS AND FRIENDS, Every year as the weather cools down, the photography season heats up in New York for a photo-intensive week of trade shows, conferences, and meetings. For the first time in many years, ASPP will join friends from the PLUS Coalition at the PhotoPLUS expo in NYC’s Jacob Javits Center, October 22–24. After a one-day breather, we travel to Jersey City for the two-day DMLA Conference, and then on October 28th, we’ll be with the image/footage/art buyers at Visual Connections at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Chelsea, Manhattan. Finally, on the day after Visual Connections, we will hold our annual day-long board meeting.

It promises to be a rich and inspring time. Please take advantage of the many opportunities to seek out an ASPP table or booth, or to reach out to a board member: Tell us what we’re doing right, what we could be doing better, and how we should celebrate our 50th Anniversary in 2016!

In 1966, the year ASPP was founded, the war in Vietnam was expanding and protests against the war were raging. During this time of great cultural, political, and technological upheaval, creativity blossomed. The use of photographs exploded in print media, as people turned to picture and news magazines to catch glimpses of what was happening. Textbooks used more photographs in their layouts as printing technology evolved and the value of images to “tell a thousand words” became more and more evident. Stock photography was a nascent industry, but picture professionals found themselves busier than ever and turned to each other for support and guidance. ASPP

was born, established by a group of picture professionals who realized the value of coming together as peers to be each other’s guides and interpreters. They reaped the benefits of networking to share professional techniques and creating the fellowship of like-minded businesspeople.

The fifty years since have seen constant revolution and evolution. Excitement and bursts of creativity sparked by the new markets, techniques, and technologies mingled with fear and anxiety as old ways became obsolete and new paths were not always evident. But through it all, images still continue to be our window into the world—nonstop and from all angles. Among the billions of images that come our way these days, there are always those that stand out and reveal previously unseen aspects of our world, past and present, in all its beauty and horror, love and hate, sadness and joy.

With one foot in the past, looking forward into the unknown of the future, ASPP will be here to help us all understand what’s happening, what’s going to happen, and what it means for picture professionals.

As we approach our milestone anniversary, ASPP members continue to turn to each other for guidance, collegiality, and business connections. We will continue to do our best to bring you news, information, and insight via our events, this magazine, and our website.

As always, I love hearing from you! Please send your ideas, inspirations, comments, questions, and suggestions to me at president@aspp.com.

CECILIA DE QUEROL ASPP.COM

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© HIROSHI CLARK, HIROSHI-CLARK.COM

EDITOR’S LETTER APRIL WOLFE

DEAR PICTURE PROS, Perhaps you have noticed (or not), but in my four-year tenure as editor of The Picture Professional, the mission of our magazine has expanded in the area of diversity to showcase a variety of disparate—economically, racially, ethnically, religiously, etc.—talent and voices. We don’t often talk about it in a public-facing way, but when we seek out photographers and writers, we spend hours and days of research finding those picture pros who may not have previously fit into our stereotypical idea of a photographer, i.e. middle- to upper-class white male.

We have nothing against the typical photographer, evidenced by the multitude of them we love enough to publish in our pages and lavish with praises. But we should also say that we go out of our way to include other tremendous voices and peoples, and we think it’s only made our magazine more dynamic; these are stories that can only be told by the people telling them.

You see, we believe that reaching gender, race, ability, age, or economic equality in representation isn’t just something that happens over time. Gatekeepers, like editors and publishers, need to step up and do the work to make it happen. And the work is never ending.

We can always do better. But we want you to know that we’re trying. This is why we’ve themed our Fall issue the “Color” issue, with offerings that push the definition of this word.

Our first portfolio comes to us from Andre Rosa, who moved from Los Angeles to New Hampshire and immersed himself in the flourishing drag-queen culture to make his Drag Queens & Covered Bridges of New Hampshire series. Next, we have Chrysanne Stathacos,

an established and revered photographer who traveled the world to take aura photographs of religious and spiritual leaders. And finally, our third portfolio comes from Irwin Wong, who documented the Japanese wabori tattooing tradition in a pretty modern and groovy light.

Our centerpiece for this issue is an in-depth feature from Brooke Hodess on how picture researchers and stock agencies can better address diversity in images, while also increasing their sales and thriving in the new economy.

We have an interview with Ophelia Chong of Stock Pot Images to talk about niche stock agencies and a new urgency to take a stand or say something of value in stock photography. Later, Kimberly Phipps walks us through the process of making a standout cookbook, with vivid imagery from Noé Montes. And Nancy E. Wolff returns with some valuable advice on photography releases and how to protect yourself—always useful. Capping the issue is our Life in Focus from Bangladesh, an image that speaks to childhood in a developing country.

As you soak up the photo-industry events of autumn and schmooze with your peers, we hope you keep this issue close to your heart. We hope you can feel empowered to broach the conversation of equality with your colleagues and get some work done to address the “tough stuff.” Aside from it being the morally right thing to do, we think this kind of conversation can help your business, and that’s what we’re about. As always we want to spur you on to create, to grow, and to connect. And if we can have some fun doing it, all the better.

Sincerely,

A WOLFE

editor@aspp.com ASPP.COM

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WHAT’S HANGING

Photo exhibitions near you

Full Spectrum Fibonacci by W Gary Rivera. The spiral of colored stained glass visually approximates a logarithmic spiral described in polar coordinates by r=a*eˆ(b*theta). The colors mimic those of the visual light spectrum from red to violet.

NEW MEXICO NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NUCLEAR SCIENCE & HISTORY 601 Eubank Blvd. SE Albuquerque ATOMIC STEaM PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW November 7, 2015–January 3, 2016 In previous years, this annual show has included a broad spectrum of photographs, ranging from documen-

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AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PICTURE PROFESSIONALS

tary-style engineering feats (think Great Wall of China and the Great Pyramid of Giza) to abstract interpretations of science as seen through a plant experiencing photosynthesis.

Anyone—professional photographer to student with a cell phone—may submit to this competition/exhibition in the hope of winning a cash prize ($50 to $500) and having their work displayed in this nationally accredited, Smithsonian-affiliated museum. If science, technology, engineering, art, or mathematics is your

thing, this is the show (and the museum!) for you. Permanent and temporary exhibits provide a window into nuclear science, including everything from the origins of atomic theory, the complexity of World War II and Cold War atomic politics, to modern-day advances in nanotechnology and nuclear medicine. The nine-acre outdoor Heritage Park is home to the largest publicly viewable aircraft collection in New Mexico and features planes, rockets, missiles, cannons, and a nuclear sub sail.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM 8th and F Streets, NW Washington IRVING PENN: BEYOND BEAUTY October 23, 2015–March 20, 2016 One of the twentieth century’s best-known American photographers, Irving Penn (1917-2009) was one of the first to break the boundaries between magazine and art photography. This retrospective of his work is the first in almost twenty years. It includes approximately 140 photographs from the American Art Museum’s permanent collection, and debuts 100 photographs recently donated by The Irving Penn Foundation.

A book, co-published by The Irving Penn Foundation and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, will accompany the exhibition, and includes an essay

by Merry Foresta, guest curator and independent consultant for the arts. The show was organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, with generous support from the Bernie Stadiem Endowment Fund, and The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. The C.F. Foundation in Atlanta supports the museum’s traveling exhibition program, Treasures to Go. This show will draw crowds, so plan for an early arrival.

Irving Penn, Mouth ( for L’Oréal), New York, 1986.

Copyright by The Irving Penn Foundation.

A unique collection of images representing the history of Russia, Soviet Union, and the entire Communist Bloc including Eastern Europe and China. research@sovfoto.com (212) 727-8170

WHAT’S HANGING MASSACHUSETTS COOPER GALLERY 102 Mt Auburn St Cambridge BLACK CHRONICLES II September 2–December 11, 2015 From the Hulton Archive, purchased

by Getty Images in 1996, this potent gathering of rare and mostly neverseen images explores the presence of black subjects in late 19th- and early 20th-century British photography.

More than one hundred photographic portraits, many side by side with original albumen cartes-de-visite, depict ordinary and prominent citizens of all stripes from the British Victorian era. The most recent publication of the intriguing African Choir portraits appeared more than 120 years ago in the London Illustrated News. As a collection, they accompany images of other well-known period personalities, some with extraordinary stories: Sara Forbes Bonetta (born in Sierra Leone, given as a gift to Queen Victoria), Ethiopian Prince Alemayehu (taken to Britain as a boy after his father committed suicide), international boxing champion Peter Jackson aka “The Black Prince” from St. Croix, and Kalulu the African “boy servant” and companion of British explorer Henry Morton Stanley.

After being closed for the summer, the Cooper Gallery has reopened with this show, produced in partnership with Autograph ABP, a British charitable organization founded in 1988 to promote and license photography marginalized in the United

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Kingdom. The gallery, funded in part by the Liberian industrialist Ethelbert Cooper, is part of Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, which is offering a rich autumn program of visiting fellows, art exhibitions, publications, research projects, archives, readings, and conferences. ●

AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PICTURE PROFESSIONALS

Eleanor Xiniwe, Member of The African Choir. London Stereoscopic Company, 1891.

Courtesy of © Hulton Archive/Getty Images

ALL THE COLORS WE CANNOT SEE

BY MICHELLE WEIDMAN

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© CHRYSANNE STATHACOS

CHRYSANNE STATHACOS AND THE AURA PROJECT

Š CHRYSANNE STATHACOS

Left: Terence, New York City, 2012. This page: Holy Man, Rishkesh, India, November, 2000. Taken at holy bead stall by the Ganges.

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© CHRYSANNE STATHACOS

PORTFOLIO: CHRYSANNE STATHACOS

“THERE IS SOMETHING sympathetic between the magic of

photography and the occult,” multimedia artist Chrysanne Stathacos explains. The Aura Project—for which she traveled the world to capture the colorful auras of artists, holy people, and psychics with an AuraCam 6000/Coggins Camera—has now turned into a seventeen-year series, with subjects ranging from the famous psychic Frank Andrews to the ascetic sadhus by the Ganges in India. And while she is the solo artist behind this metaphysical political epic, there has always been another hand at work behind the scenes.

The project began as an homage to a friend, artist Robert Flack, who shared Stathacos’s fascination of the metaphysical in art. “It was an interest that went against the grain of what was going on at that time,” says Stathacos. In the 1980s, neoexpressionism ruled painting and documentary and black-and-white photography dominated public consciousness—worldwide political upheaval rendered it almost impossible to imagine a narrative outside of a warped reality. “[Flack] went to India, which had a profound effect on his work, resulting in his Love Mind and Empowerment series,” Stathacos says. “His exploration of other realms expanded once he contracted AIDS.” And presumably, Stathacos’s exploration expanded, too.

Stathacos and Flack weren’t aware of the aura camera before Flack’s passing, but Stathacos thinks it would have stirred his interest in the “ethereal body.” Like other artists who’ve coped with terminal illness by contemplating death and the afterlife, Flack infused his work with elemental and archaic themes, using color and shape to depict this “ethereal body.” In a way, it is as if Stathacos’s Aura Project has continued where Flack’s work left off.

Still, despite the attraction to the murky metaphysical, Stathacos is highly interested in the science behind auraphotographing mechanisms. Even a traditional camera’s ability to capture images that cannot be seen by the human eye renders it somehow mystical. Photography’s skill at exhibiting the presence of an object that is no longer immediately, physically present —what French theorist Roland Barthes called a “temporal hallucination”— produces another degree of “aura.” These considerations have influenced Stathacos’s specific interest in aura photography and its more literal, sometimes more intricate, interpretations of the psychic realm.

Aura photography translates electromagnetic pulses that emanate from the subject’s hands and develops them into what Stathacos refers to as “color spaces.”

People believe different things when it comes to what is recorded in this particular process, but this doesn’t take away from the magic of the resulting images. Stathacos is less interested in the interpretive function of the colors that emerge in the images and instead turns to that same elemental spirit Flack had in his work.

“The Aura Project refers to the unseen colors that we imagine are there, our unconscious projections of our reactions to color,” she explains. She’s interested in the spiritual and scientific theories from early 20th–century figures like Rudolph Steiner, who is known for his concepts of color being, in his words, a “revelation of the psychic world.”

“Steiner gets more into the meaning of colors,” Stathacos says. “I depart from that because for me the color spaces are rather intimate, personal things, even though some of the color spaces can look very similar.”

PEOPLE BELIEVE DIFFERENT THINGS WHEN IT COMES TO WHAT IS RECORDED IN THIS PARTICULAR PROCESS, BUT THIS DOESN’T TAKE AWAY FROM THE MAGIC OF THE RESULTING IMAGES. 16

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© CHRYSANNE STATHACOS

Previous spread: The Aura Grid is a large-format digital photograph incorporating forty images within a color grid. Produced within a black overlay to evoke the feeling of a stained glass window—metaphorically capturing light though color—the piece arranges subjects by their color emanations. Perceived differences of gender, ethnicity, and race are meant to be dismantled by breaking through to the unseen values of light and color. This page: Frank, New York Cty, 2000. Series of portraits taken in one sitting of renowned psychic Frank Andrews, whose clients once included Princess Grace and John Lennon.

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© ROBERT FLACK

PORTFOLIO: CHRYSANNE STATHACOS

She is careful to acknowledge and performances. Even afthat the meaning of colors is ter a decade, the photographs incredibly contingent, meaning have an evolving and growdifferent things in different ing audience. Stathacos’s places, different times, and to aura photos have been exdifferent people. Her goal is hibited internationally, most not to diagnose or proclaim the recently in the acclaimed exspiritual wholeness of as many hibition The Temptation of AA Bronson at Witte de With people as possible. Rather, Center for Contemporary Art she wants the photographs to in Rotterdam, along with artbring up ideas of a universality ists such as Flack, Marina of sorts in the way that we all Abramovic, and Mike Kelley. share certain basic components The project will also show this and those components are fall at the Grazer Kunstverein themselves ever changing. in Graz, Austria. She relates Her piece The Color Grid, for the series’ popularity to culinstance, attempts to show this Robert Flack, Anatomical Garden, 1990, c-print, edition tural shifts. universality by arranging forty of 3, 40 x 30 inches. One of the artist’s last pieces, it is a direct precursor of Stathacos’s The Aura Project. aura images by their emitted “Our fear of death and the colors, thereby placing some unknown increases in times seemingly unlike people next of great global instability,” she to one another if their auras are a “match.” says. “We search for answers to the unknown and hope “In the late 20th century, artists—and especially women that our life force emanates light. If you look at the pictorial history of the aura going back to the saints and artists—who explored metaphysical or spiritual theories religious figures, one sees the visual idea of emanation were not taken seriously,” Stathacos explains. “Thankfully, coming from the body depicted in many, many ways.” today we see younger artists exploring these ideas in their This emanation, a unity of body and the unconscious, work along with many older artists who have come out of gives the concept of the aura its biological and psychic the spiritual/metaphysical/intuitive closet.” duality. “One can make work that is conceptual, This increase in interest in the metaphysical realm metaphysical, and intuitive,” Stathacos says. “Art that may, in part, be why so much interest has surrounded explores dualities is often the most astounding and Stathacos’s project and the resulting images, which she often incorporates into her multimedia installations provocative because it is fearless.” ●

“OUR FEAR OF DEATH AND THE UNKNOWN INCREASES IN TIMES OF GREAT GLOBAL INSTABILITY,” SHE SAYS. “WE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS TO THE UNKNOWN AND HOPE THAT OUR LIFE FORCE EMANATES LIGHT.” 18

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© CHRYSANNE STATHACOS © CHRYSANNE STATHACOS

© CHRYSANNE STATHACOS © CHRYSANNE STATHACOS

Top left: Girl, Nara, Japan, April 2001. Taken at temple in Nara, the first capital of Japan. The city still holds some of the largest Buddhist temples in that country. Top right: Rainbow Self, self portrait, New York, February, 2000.

Bottom left: Artist, New York City, October, 1999. Bottom right: Sadhu, Vrindavan, December, 2000.

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COOL IS

SKIN DEEP © IRWIN © SHAWN WONGRECORDS

IRWIN WONG’S WABORI TATTOOS

BY JOHN W. W. ZEISER

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© IRWIN WONG

© IRWIN WONG

PORTFOLIO: IRWIN WONG TATTOOING HAS A LONG HISTORY in Japan, sometimes

decorative, sometimes punitive, but always colorful and always permanent. For centuries, its connotations were contested. In the Edo isolationist and shogunate period—where poetry and art like Hokusai’s iconic The Great Wave proliferated—wabori (traditional Japanese tattoos) depicted this new style of painting and drawing on the skin with social approval. But during the Meiji Restoration, tattoos were criminalized. The craft’s masters were forced underground.

Today, wabori still recalls the art of the free and uncensored Edo period, but it’s also firmly associated with the Yakuza, a transnational organized crime syndicate. Everyone from owners of local bathhouses to the mayor of Osaka is leery of anyone with tattoos. But despite the cultural, and sometimes legal, prohibitions against the art, thousands of cool-hunters have sought these tattoos for centuries, including George V and Czar Nicholas II. “Cool,” however, wasn’t what photographer Irwin Wong was after when he photographed these master craftsmen.

“The problem is, in Japan a lot of these traditional crafts and techniques are dying out because the current masters cannot find apprentices to train,” Wong says.

In a place like Tokyo, where life moves at almost lightspeed, traditions like this are under particular strain.

Capturing these practitioners in this time and this place will reaffirm its existence, as the last tattooists die out.

If you’re unfamiliar with Wong’s images, you’ll find he’s fascinated with workers and their environs. His portraits of everyone from chefs and kimono makers to taxi drivers and CEOs are rooted in an appreciation of people who devote their lives to a singular goal.

“I have the utmost respect for them and also feel a certain kinship to them,” Wong says. “These kinds of

people spend their entire lives trying to hone their craft and surpass the masters who’ve come before them.”

And few in Tokyo are more singularly devoted to their craft than these tattoo artists.

As you might imagine, connecting with one of these artists isn’t easy. They keep almost as low a profile as their clientele and are not necessarily advertising or looking for walk-ins. But Wong says, once you find a phone number, “You can call out of the blue, and they are usually very receptive and open to the idea of doing a photo shoot.

From that point, they’ll often call up their own clients and tell them to come in for the photo shoot.”

Wong’s images are wonderfully subdued; even the more staged portraits in this series have a candid quality. He’s able to capture the artists and their clients in moments of contemplation or repose. It almost makes you forget what a long, sometimes painful and surely expensive process it can be to cover an entire body in intricately shaded images of dragons, kirin, tigers, samurais, and Buddhas.

In the work scenes, though, he captures the intense concentration that feels almost out of place in the small, homey atmosphere of the artists’ studios.

“I don’t really go out of my way to inject any narrative or subtext into my photos,” Wong says. Yet each picture does tell a story. It’s a testament to Wong’s pre-production footwork. Make the calls, be brave, and you’ll stumble into a world only a few are privileged to see.

What his images do is bring into sharp focus a process of work that has taken a lifetime to perfect. They’ve been collected, along with a few other photographers’ wabori images, for the book Wabori: Traditional Japanese Tattoo. Authored by Manami Okazaki, who braved the male-dominated world to interview some very tightlipped and interesting men for her collection, this is a must-read for Japanophiles. ●

“THE PROBLEM IS, IN JAPAN A LOT OF THESE TRADITIONAL CRAFTS AND TECHNIQUES ARE DYING OUT BECAUSE THE CURRENT MASTERS CANNOT FIND APPRENTICES TO TRAIN.”

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© IRWIN WONG

© IRWIN WONG

PORTFOLIO: IRWIN WONG

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© IRWIN WONG

© SHAWN © IRWINRECORDS WONG

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© IRWIN WONG

© IRWIN WONG

© ANDRE ROSA

THE

Drag Queens Covered Bridges “The whole thing started as a joke: ‘I’ve discovered the culture of New Hampshire. It’s covered bridges and drag queens,’” photographer Andre Rosa explains.

Rosa had just moved to New Hampshire as part of the Free State Project, an effort to bring 20,000 libertarians to the state, hoping to influence local politics. A gay man from California, one of his first stops was The Breezeway, a hole-in-the-wall gay bar in Manchester. He was looking for community but didn’t expect much. What he saw blew him away.

BY JOSH STEICHMANN

Right page, top: January, Cherry Lyquor, Prentiss Bridge, Langdon, NH. Bottom: November, Katrina George, Stark Bridge, Stark, NH.

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© ANDRE ROSA

OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

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© ALLISON JANAE HAMILTON

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© ANDRE ROSA © ANDRE ROSA

PORTFOLIO: ANDRE ROSA

“It’s THE form of entertainment and performance for the gay community in New Hampshire,” says Rosa.

“There’s a lot of pride in it. There are drag shows almost every night of the week.”

Backed by a Kickstarter campaign, Rosa grabbed his D5100 and a couple of lightboxes and set out across the state. “New Hampshire has a lot of history, and I love so much small-town history juxtaposed with glam.” And so The Drag Queens & Covered Bridges of New Hampshire project was born.

Not everyone was welcoming. Clark’s Trading Post in Lincoln yanked approval after finding out Rosa was going to shoot a drag queen on its bridge, the only railroad bridge in New Hampshire. Rosa scrambled to find a replacement, ending up with the cover image of Amber Alyrt in front of Fisher Bridge in Wolcott, VT. “There’s not many covered bridges with railroad tracks, and I knew I wanted to have the damsel in distress,” says Rosa.

“The worst one—I literally cried all the way home,” says Rosa, about the Bartlett, NH’s Bartlett Inn. “They said they were uncomfortable with the photo shoot happening on the bridge. [They] denied me permission because his bridge was a ‘wholesome place.’ I drove away weeping; I didn’t know those two words could strike so hard.” The next day, Rosa moved the shoot with Laila McQueen to the nearby Swift River Bridge in Conway, NH, and got a much warmer reception.

“We got to this bridge right after a couple finished shooting their wedding pictures. We were shooting and this guy and his daughter came up. His daughter thought Laila was Lady Gaga,” says Rosa. “[The father] said ‘Well, this is won-

derful. You don’t see this sort of thing up in Conway!’”

Part of what makes the calendar work is its vibrant range of performed femininity—in front of the traditional, romantic set piece of a covered bridge, Miss Toni sits in genteel pause from an imagined cotillion; Cherry Lyquor pops as an iridescent green diva. The breadth of the New Hampshire drag community gave Rosa the ability to showcase a wide variety of gender play, from the damsel trope to the sexy models to the forlorn heroine in quiet thought.

“There’s this group, the Plastics—Britney Lynn, Nicohl D Lafontaine—very ‘fishy,’ very glam. And the other faction is girls like Violencia Exclamation Point. Her friends use drag to say, ‘How do I push the limits with makeup? How do I push the limits with fashion?’” The latter are clearly influenced by John Waters and Divine, with a kind of audacious nastiness that holds power in well-defined brows.

The makeup and costuming are no joke.

Rosa himself performed once as David Boobie, a Diamond Dogs vamp. “Getting into makeup took two hours, getting into costume took another hour. I Naired my hair—everything.” It’s a testament to the grueling beauty regimes to which some women have resigned themselves, and by performing that part of femininity, the queens get little tastes of the daily pains of being a woman within traditional gender confines.

The calendar was successful, but Rosa sees it as a one-off, not wanting to be just known as that “queens and bridges photographer.” He’s running for alderman in Manchester, and is working on The Travel Car, a mobile, modular art gallery that can bring art to people throughout the state. With Rosa in town, New Hampshire is about to loosen up its collar and let down some big, fake hair. ●

Left page, top: March, Ivy League, Squam River Bridge, Ashland, NH. Bottom: May, Miss Toni, Waterloo Bridge, Warner, NH.

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© ANDRE ROSA

© ANDRE ROSA

© ANDRE ROSA

PORTFOLIO: ANDRE ROSA

THE BREADTH OF THE NEW HAMPSHIRE DRAG COMMUNITY GAVE ROSA THE ABILITY TO SHOWCASE A WIDE VARIETY OF GENDER PLAY, FROM THE DAMSEL TROPE TO THE SEXY MODELS TO THE FORLORN HEROINE IN QUIET THOUGHT.

Left page, top: July, Violencia Exclamation Point, Wentworth Golf Course Bridge, Jackson, NH. Bottom: September, Amber Alyrt, Fisher Bridge, Wolcott, VT. Above: February, Nicohl D Lafontaine & Britney Lynn, Cilleyville Bridge, Andover, NH.

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SHOOTING FOR DIVERSITY IN STOCK IMAGERY

Whose responsibility is it to portray realistic life?

BY BROOKE HODESS

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dvertising is often about telling aspirational stories. In the US, the imagery for those aspirational stories are often limited to white people with zero physical challenges and, if they’re women, of a specific body type (thin) and age (not “too old”).

Though advertisers are selling products to those at the top of their focus groups, these images send the message that aspiration applies only to the privileged.

And although we occasionally see brands trying to bust stereotypes and be inclusive—Chevy, Cheerios, J.C. Penney, as mentioned in AdAge.com’s 2014 article, “Ad Campaigns Are Finally Reflecting Diversity of US”—after a few days or weeks of making the rounds on social media, advertising ultimately stays in the pocket of the conventional.

So how do we make diversity in imagery the norm and not merely a novelty?

The Responsibility of the Agency Stock imagery—and those who produce it, snap it, curate it, research it, and buy it—is striving to change the status quo as well as redefine its own public image, often filed under “camp and cheese” or unrealistic. Art producer and photo 36

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researcher Ellen Herbert, founder of NEAT Production, says, “One thing that we all try to avoid is the ‘crayon box’ syndrome, where a group of models are shown of different ethnicities in an obvious or gratuitous fashion.”

A fix for the “crayon box” problem could be as simple as a stock agency coordinating better between photographers and keyworders. But for this to work correctly, it needs to be a priority for everyone involved. Today, we have a few agencies leading the diversity pack, including Blend Images out of Seattle.

“One thing that Blend does, which is great,” Herbert says, “is that they require ethnic backgrounds on their releases so that images are properly keyworded to specific requests. Ixnay on tokenism.”

Back when Blend was just starting and looking for a niche, CEO and Principal Founder Rick Becker-Leckrone had noticed an unresolved constant: a dearth of high-quality, non-stereotypical, multiethnic business and lifestyle content. Says VP Creative Sarah Fix, “Our focus was really to go beyond shooting a Latino, African American, or Asian person just for the sake of different skin color and to put together a collection with breadth and depth that respectfully addresses cultural nuance, and messaging that speaks

BLEND “Our focus was really to go beyond shooting a Latino, African American, or Asian person just for the sake of different skin color and to put together a collection with breadth and depth that respectfully addresses cultural nuance, and messaging that speaks to a range of commercially underrepresented individuals.” © Take A Pix/Blend

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DIVERSITY

guage, making eye contact with the camera, and instructto a range of commercially underrepresented individuals.” ing the other characters in the photo.

With the tagline “celebrating diversity” and a catalog of Asked whether Shestock’s catalog (more than 7,000 more than 200K images, Blend has expanded to include images) is based on client demand or if it’s about changaspirational photos that focus on women, the LGBT coming and redefining the demand, Beard states, “We are munity, and people with disabilities. trying to change demand by showing that more respectPart of that catalog includes a collection from Disability ful and authentic images of Images, which, according to women create a deeper and their website, “creates and dismore authentic relationship tributes royalty-free stock phobetween brands and their custography of positive lifestyle, tomers.” Beard has the images, containing authentic people but getting photo researchwith real disabilities.” Also iners at ad agencies to pick up cluded is Shestock, a collection on their availability requires a committed to providing insightlarger cultural shift. ful and inspired visions of the “The challenge right now real lives of real women. is getting brands to invest the “In the US and most of the extra effort to more carefully Western world, we have all been curate the images that they brought up surrounded by the use,” Beard says. “Honest imsame visual language of not ages are the same as being perjust blatant sexism but, more sonally honest, and that is the troublingly, subtle sexism,” basis for any meaningful relasays Karen Beard, founder of tionship.”

Shestock. “Subjugating women by positioning men standing Breaking In above females, directing them, With Niche Markets or women dressed more provocatively than the men in the Honesty in imagery is what NOVEL EXPRESSION image—these may seem subtle, Ophelia Chong is banking on. but to me they are the real probAfter an aha moment in the “There are more and more books lem that constantly reinforces shower when she wondered being published that feature different sexism in imagery.” what type of marijuana stock ethnicities and types of relationships.

One of the areas Shestock images existed, she conducted Novel Expression is working toward providing options for our clients.” has focused on is the imagery of a Google search, scoured Getty © Jenn LeBlanc/Novel Expression women and girls in STEM (sciand Corbis, and found nothence, technology, electronics, ing more than the stereotypical and math). In contrast to common STEM imagery, which stoner with a giant bong in a cloud of pot smoke. shows male leadership almost exclusively, Shestock’s colWith four states (Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and lection offers women and girls with confident body lanAlaska) and the District of Columbia having legalized 38

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STOCK POT “A stereotyped image doesn’t benefit the community,” Chong says. “It doesn’t benefit the viewer; it doesn’t benefit anyone unless you’re against legalization. To show the really true face of cannabis, you need the true faces.” © Ezekiel Williams/Stock Pot Images

marijuana for recreational use, and several other states, including California—where Chong is based—permitting medicinal use, it’s just a matter of time, Chong believes, before there’s nationwide legalization at the federal level.

Chong and her newly grown (soft launch was on 4/20 of this year) Stock Pot Images are at the ready.

“I am predicting that health care—AARP, Blue Cross, Anthem, Kaiser—will all have a very large base of Baby Boomers who are going to be using cannabis for one reason or another,” said Chong in a phone interview. “And they are going to need images of real seniors, people they can relate to, not some girl in a nurse’s uniform with big hooters and a green cross [the iconic symbol that indicates a cannabis dispensary]. They’ll want real images.”

And aside from Stock Pot’s more serene treatment of cannabis in images, Chong has also made an effort to populate the images with women and men over the age of fifty, as well as younger Latinas, Native Americans, and Caucasians. One image, for example, is of an African American woman, Panji, who is a Marine vet. With two tours in Afghanistan, she now suffers from PTSD and uses cannabis to help manage it (“successfully,” Chong notes).

If there were a checklist for diversity, this single image

could hit all the points, yet it still has a natural, completely unstaged air. This may be because Chong’s photographers have been instructed to seek out real people—not models.

“A stereotyped image doesn’t benefit the community,” Chong says. “It doesn’t benefit the viewer; it doesn’t benefit anyone unless you’re against legalization. To show the really true face of cannabis, you need the true faces. I have one of an older woman who’s sitting on a day bed smoking a joint, with her black Labrador at her feet. She’s reading a book; she’s sixty. It’s a really great image for, say, Blue Cross or Kaiser,” says Chong. “The image is of a sixty-year-old woman who’s doing exactly what a sixty-year-old woman would be doing, so it’s relatable.”

Other niche stock companies are broadening the scope of diversity in fantasy imagery. Novel Expression, the brainchild of Sheridan Stancliff, who then recruited photographer Chip Latshaw and Ellen Herbert (NEAT), produces stock imagery and artwork for romance novels and genre fiction. Diverting from the Fabio fantasy and “bodice rippers” of decades past, Novel Expression honors savvy readership in romance novels and the gender and sexual-orientation diversity in the publications. “There are more and more books being published that feature 39

SHESTOCK “Authenticity was very important.

For this image, the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) students coordinated use of campus laboratories and machine shops for an evening, and the models used are all engineering students of Western Washington University. The young women who participated in the photo shoot were familiar with how the equipment worked. They helped set up realistic shots.”

– Jessica Gwozdz © Jessica Gwozdz/Shestock

different ethnicities and types of relationships. Novel Expression is working toward providing options for our clients,” Stancliff says.

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recent project was the launch of the Jenn LeBlanc Collection that featured beautiful same-sex couples in contemporary and historical costumes.

Plans are in the works for more shoots featuring same-sex couples as well as people of color, but all of this depends on casting. Herbert is still dependent on those who answer the call, who apply. People of color may see a casting call for a romance shoot and not even apply, having become accustomed to being excluded. Herbert says she’s working on convincing the formerly excluded that they are now in great demand. It’ll take time, but she’s not giving up. It’s a matter of being explicit and inclusive in the casting calls, even if what you’re really looking for is normal people.

“The authors and designers that are our clients call for women that are closer to the average rather than the runway,” Herbert says. And she’s happy she gets to cast them.

Stock Pot and Novel Expressions uproot the status quo in niche markets, while agencies like Diversity Images, Shestock, and Queerstock (an LGTB lifestyle agency) apply to anyone buying commercial imagery.

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The Challenge for Photo Researchers “The challenges of changing past practices and ensuring that imagery depicts women and girls respectfully and authentically cuts across all industries,” Beard says. Though she speaks to gender accuracy, the same aim to “unlearn” set stereotypes and deliver truthful imagery applies to all.

Blend’s Sarah Fix says, “I think the guiding principal when working on creating content to speak to any audience culturally different than one’s own is respect. I remember a Mexican-American woman once saying to me, ‘not every kid in Mexico runs around with a soccer ball.’ Indeed. If you’re going to be successful at creating culturally sensitive content, you’ve got to be ready to listen first.”

Listening is half the battle for photo researchers, and it’s often how they slip in diversity where it may not have been initially requested. Wearing her researcher hat, Herbert says, “I will always do my utmost to deliver to spec, but any researcher who likes their work will show options and throw in ‘wild cards.’”

Amy Boyd of Getty Images echoes this strategy. “One hundred percent I will sneak stuff in all the time when there’s room for diversity on a project.”

And what warrants “room for diversity”?

DIVERSITY

“There’s diversity in good photography. And if you’re able to send out a good lightbox of good photography you’re going to have diversity in there, for sure,” says Boyd.

“Clients may come with a very rigid spec and they don’t know that what they want is something that’s more diverse.

I’ll say to a client, ‘Let me give you what you’ve asked for and then let me give you what is good photography and what I think is going to work in your piece.’ And maybe you can sneak those to the front.”

And according to Boyd, it’s not just offering diverse alternatives that makes an impact. It’s how you offer them.

“The way that you organize a lightbox has an impact on how they view the shots and which ones they pick. It sounds tedious, but it’s actually important.”

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etty Images, the twenty-year-old photo service giant, is quite methodical in analyzing trends. The creative research team of their Global Trends group may put out a call for tear sheets to know what’s being seen in advertising to a particular market. A cultural analysis is done to see how, for example, advertising to a Hispanic market differs from an African American market or Southern market or any other specific regional or cultural target. What makes an image for them different and better?

Boyd points out different interpretations of keywords.

“Take a concept like achievement. We see a lot of people standing on mountaintops with their arms raised that are by themselves, and that doesn’t necessarily resonate in certain markets because they value family more. It does take time to communicate that to photographers and get the right models,” says Boyd. This goes back to the beginning, to having a unifying mission of diversity and communication among photographers, keyworders, researchers, and agencies.

In conjunction with knowing cultural trends, and staying on top of visual trends and technology, different ways to shoot also come into play. “All that is happening at the same time,” says Boyd. “It’s never a final product, in that respect.”

Another diversity effort of Getty’s is their Lean In

initiative. Working closely with Lean In term-coiner Sheryl Sandberg and her nonprofit LeanIn.org, Getty has curated a collection of diverse and authentic photography of women. “It’s a request that the financial and tech industries have been vocal about since they are actively trying to recruit more women and girls into those industries,” says Boyd.

So Why Aren’t Magazines and Ad Agencies Catching Up? All this research can go a long way. No doubt, analyzing how people of different cultures react to different word stimuli can only help refine our diversity tools. But for some, the changes seem to be coming a little too slowly.

Magazines are publishing content from more diverse writers and looking for appropriate accompanying imagery, but at a loss when it comes to finding it.

Husband and wife team Julie Schwietert Collazo and Francisco Collazo aren’t satisfied. “While more publications, especially online publications, are being increasingly inclusive in their content, the accompanying visuals aren’t reflecting diverse people and realities,” said writer and journalist Schwietert Collazo.

“Francisco and I have a running joke about there not being pictures of people of color doing ‘normal things,’” she says. “Riding a bike, typing on a laptop, eating a meal at a nice restaurant, holding a cup of coffee.”

The Long Island City–based Collazos decided to answer their own call and build a stock agency, Diversistock, soft launching later this year.

“Our mission is to bring to life the variety that’s in this world, the diversity that’s lacking in mainstream media,” says Collazo, a photographer and Afro-Cuban. “When I walk out the door, I don’t just see white men. I live in the most diverse county in the United States, so I want to be honest with my reality, which is colorful and rich and varied and deserves to be depicted.”

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AS A GUIDELINE FOR ADVERTISERS, SHESTOCK’S TAGLINE PROBABLY SUMS IT UP BEST: “THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU CREATE; CHANGE WHAT YOU BUY.”

When pointing out Getty’s efforts on diversity and Boyd’s statement that “photographers today are inherently shooting imagery of diversity and ethnicity,” Schwietert Collazo has her doubts.

“If that’s the case, why are we not seeing more of these images in stock pools?” she said. “If I hadn’t spent hours looking through stock images, I might suggest the answer is that we still have to do some media literacy with editors and publishers. While there are many editors and publishers who are aware of the lack of inclusiveness in their visual imagery and want to correct that, there are also many editors whose unconscious default is that of the kinds of people they’ve seen for so long: mostly white, mostly male,

mostly thin, mostly young or middle-aged, mostly straight, and mostly able-bodied. So part of our work, too, is helping people to learn to look for these images.”

In Schwietert Collazo’s experience researching images, she found that editors often look for very specific elements in imagery, so even though more images exist with diversity, they still may not be the right ones.

“One editor, who works for an outdoor magazine, said it wasn’t just enough to have pictures of people of color, for example, hiking or rock climbing,” Schwietert Collazo says. “They needed to be outfitted in the appropriate clothing and gear. Among the few stock images that exist depicting people of color in the outdoors, al-

BLEND “I think the guiding principal when working on creating content to speak to any audience culturally different than one’s own is respect. I remember a Mexican-American woman once saying to me, ‘not every kid in Mexico runs around with a soccer ball.’ © Hill Street Studios/Blend

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BLEND With the tagline “celebrating diversity” and a catalog of more than 200K images, Blend has expanded to include aspirational photos that focus on women, the LGBT community, and people with disabilities. © Granger Wootz/Blend

most none show them in appropriate clothing. That was a revelation for me.”

In fact, ad agencies and traditional publishers are just now catching up to the problem educational publishers have faced for years. Educational publishers have long had ethnic and racial quotas in place for their books. Unfortunately, this is where budget-conscious, royalty-free imagery reigns, and the specificity of image requests can make it extremely difficult to fill them if there just isn’t a wide array from which to choose. Chances are, you may have seen the same images used over and over in textbooks, even dated-looking ones that seem wildly out of place in 2015.

“There are many niches where specialized photos are needed,” Schwietert Collazo says. “We’ve got a long ‘to-do’ list ahead of us.”

What Now? If stock agencies can’t pick up the slack, user-generated content (UGC) may push diversity boundaries for them, whether they like it or not. The popularity of Flickr and its creative commons search can be a thorn in many agencies’ sides, or it can be a wake-up call, maybe taking a cue from the movies—if you build diversity, they will come. They— the public—are demanding the change.

Herbert says, “The explosive success of UGC has shown that customers do want images that are more ‘real life.’

That is exciting for all of us.”

With myriad boutique shops that seem founded out of frustration with the status quo and even the efforts of larger institutions, the stock industry is inching closer and closer to having catalogs that mirror society.

When asked if she sees herself as an activist, Stock Pot’s Ophelia Chong said, “I started out as more trying to fill a void, but as I got more into cannabis communities and collectives, I became an activist, because I started seeing what people were buying and using for mass media and I thought, ‘That is wrong. That is not this group.’”

For Shestock’s Karen Beard, the mother of a young girl who was questioning the sexist imagery that surrounded her daily, she admits her starting point was more activist.

The Collazos have also been motivated by wanting to improve the world for themselves and their children, “a world,” says Schwietert Collazo, “that is more representative and humane, that doesn’t forget the people who have traditionally been overlooked and marginalized.”

Photo researchers and editors agree. “Ultimately,” says Herbert, “the customer will drive the market—if they are willing to license images that are closer to the real thing, we all will gladly supply them.” ●

Q&A / STOCK POT IMAGES

Changing the face of cannabis with stock images © ROBIEE ZIEGLER/STOCK POT IMAGES

BY KATIE BUNTSMA

A Marine vet with two tours in Afghanistan, Jayn Grene treats her PTSD with cannabis.

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PHELIA CHONG BEGAN Stock Pot Images, a canna-

bis-focused stock agency when she realized nobody was offering real portraits of cannabis users. To glean some extra advice on how to find an untapped niche and tackle a business that’s not 100 percent legal in some states, we asked Chong a few extra questions.

Who were your initial investors and contributors?

Stock Pot’s initial funding all came from women. I filed for LLC status and am now in the process of getting a trademark. When we launched the site on 4/20 [2015], we had about forty contributing photographers; now we’re at ninety, with over 3,000 images. I sign new contributors and onboard new images every day. First, I approached talent I already knew. Some people were interested and some people weren’t because of the content. But once the word spread that I was doing this, I started getting phone 44

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calls. A lot of women from the Women Grow network helped connect me to top cannabis photographers, too.

Is it important that this industry has a lot of gender bias–free opportunity?

YES. There are a lot of conferences and panels made of white men, but what I see on the ground is a lot of women—white, African American, Latinas, but no Asians. At our Thursday Women Grow meeting, we had over one hundred people, but I was the only Asian, and that’s not unusual; that’s the norm.

Because of that, I met two amazing women in San Francisco—Monica Lo (photographer and creative director) and Tiffany Wu (Harvard-schooled attorney, specializing in cannabis). Together we started Asian Americans for Cannabis Education (AACE). It’s a non-profit organization and our mission is to educate Asians about cannabis

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Q&A / STOCK POT IMAGES “I PREDICT THAT WITHIN A YEAR OR TWO, BIG PHARMA COMPANIES ARE GOING TO NEED THIS IMAGERY. MORE MAINSTREAM DOCTORS WILL SAY, ‘THIS IS CANNABIS, WE’RE GOING TO PRESCRIBE IT TO YOU, THIS IS HOW TO USE IT.’ ” because the biggest group against cannabis legalization in California is Asians.

Have you stumbled across any unforeseen roadblocks or challenges?

Banking was a huge challenge. Even though I don’t dispense cannabis, I still had a problem opening up a bank account.

Insurance was another tough issue because it is cannabis.

Usually it would only take a day to get business insurance, but it took me nearly three weeks. What we’re doing right now is swimming upstream. In a few years, we’ll be running with the herd. When you run with the herd, there’s more competition. Right now, because it’s such a struggle to legitimately start a business in this field, we’ve become more like big fish in a little pond. It can easily run into five

figures before you open the doors for all the paperwork, insurance, etc. We have a long-range goal for getting our return on investment—two years. First we need to build up our contributor list and our collection. But as more states legalize—Nevada and the wild west of Las Vegas, anywhere— the demand for our imagery will increase. You have to take risks and bet on the future. We use imagery as a weapon of change; the stock agency world needs to push past the “elevator music” imagery that pervades most of the collections and show images that are about stronger opinions, viewpoints. The images need to say something, rather than be a medium for a middle-of-the-road point of view. The stock agencies that will make a difference are niche-based; they have a viewpoint, a stand. You can’t be everything to everybody, because what happens is you lose who you are. ●

THE LAW

Releases 101: Why and When You Need Them

BY NANCY E. WOLFF

W

HETHER A PHOTOGRAPHER needs to obtain

any additional permission from third parties to publish or license a photograph depends on both the content depicted in the photograph and the context of the intended use.

Here’s a rundown of the dos and don’ts of releases.

People A person can be recognizable by more than than facial features, like a distinctive tattoo, a silhouette, or an attribute that makes it easy to identify the person by association. For example, The Naked Cowboy in NYC has long hair and always dresses in white underwear, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat. A particular musician may have a uniquely decorated guitar, or a baseball pitcher may have an identifiable stance. Some states have privacy or publicity laws—either by statute or common law (case law)—that restrict the right to use someone’s name or likeness for a commercial purpose without consent. Countries outside the US have similar laws and may be more restrictive, protecting individual’s privacy even in public places. Whether you need permission depends on the intended use; is it “editorial” or “commercial”?

A photograph is editorial if it’s used to illustrate a story in a publication, broadcast, or film that is newsworthy, cultural, or of public interest. These uses are protected in the US by the First Amendment, freedom of press, and freedom of expression. Even if an editorial photograph is licensed or sold for a fee, it will not be considered “commercial use” under privacy law, and consequently not require consent from the person depicted.

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Photographs depicting recognizable people are okay if the use is considered expressive, like a photograph displayed as art. Other expressive uses would include an article, book, or documentary featuring a photographer’s work.

Editorial use also includes images that depict entertainment, sports, music, and other events, like truthful articles in magazines, newspapers, blogs, non-fiction books, documentaries, and news broadcasts. The fact that the public is interested in the subject—whether it’s politics or what a celebrity wears to go out shopping—will shield the use from privacy laws. The only requirement is that there be a reasonable relationship between the photograph and the event or subject illustrated by the photograph.

For example, a photograph of a large family used to illustrate an article about in vitro fertilization and caffeine use was considered outside of New York’s privacy law, even though none of the children were conceived through in vitro fertilization. If the use is editorial or incidental advertising, such as the sale of a magazine or newspaper with a news image on the cover, use of the editorial image is not considered a privacy violation.

What is called “advertorial” is not, however, an editorial use. Its purpose is to appear to the reader as a neutral article, but is written to promote a commercial purpose. A release would be required to illustrate an advertorial article. And don’t think that if someone dies, their image and likeness doesn’t need a release. The right of privacy or publicity may be transferable at death to heirs in some states or countries. In several states, including New York, the right terminates at death.

When it comes to groups, you might be able to license a photograph of a large crowd if none of the individuals are the focus of the image or could be made the focus through tight cropping. Otherwise, if you want to make photographs of individuals available for commercial licensing in the US (sometimes referred to in the industry as “creative images”) you will need to obtain a written model release. Authorization for this broad use must be obtained from the person depicted, or—in the case of deceased subjects—from the estate. In fact, most image licensing companies will require you to submit broad model releases to accompany accepted images if recognizable people are depicted. Photographs, even taken of family and friends, cannot be used for commercial purposes without proper release. Sample releases are available through trade associations and image libraries. There are even ready-to-sign electronic release forms available through the app store.

Objects and other property As rights of privacy and publicity laws only provide restrictions on the publication of recognizable people, any restrictions on the use of other subjects in images—recognizable objects, animals, works of art, furniture, or buildings—must be based on other legal theories, such as trademark or copyright. In a case in which there is no legal impairment, releases may still be requested by clients; if a subject within the image is recognizable, a release will make that photograph easier to license.

For example, when shooting outdoors, sculptures, monuments, murals, and graffiti are all subject to copyright as works of visual art. If these works are the focus of the photograph—and not an incidental background element—you could be violating the artist’s copyright by photographing the works. Photographs of interiors may include paintings, sculptures, family photographs, and copyrightable objects. Similarly, if these works are the focus of the photograph, and not incidental, permission from the copyright owner may be needed in order to publish the image; furniture, clothing, and many manufactured objects, however, are not protected under US copyright law, as they are considered “useful” objects.

It is important to remember that copyright in a work of art is separate from the physical object, so the purchaser of the artwork would only own

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THE LAW

the object, while the artist who created it would own the copyright. You would need to obtain permission to publish the photograph directly from the artist (or the estate), not the owner.

Even some editorial uses may require additional consent unless another exception to copyright applies. Fair use, for instance, permits the use of a copyrighted work under limited circumstances. If a photograph of a work of art is taken at an art opening and later published in an article concerning the opening or photographs are taken of murals on outdoor walls in an article featuring the outdoor art of a city, this could be covered under fair use.

Although architectural works are protected by copyright, this does not prohibit the taking of a photograph of a building from a public space. Copyright protection afforded architecture only prohibits another builder from building a similar building. Although copyright law may not restrict the publication of a photograph of a building, it is possible that for some commercial uses you may need a property release, or permission from a building owner if the owner can establish violation of rights under trademark law.

As a practical matter, if you are shooting the interior of a person’s home or business, you should obtain a property release from the owner, as you would need permission to enter the property and take the shots. In addition, many cultural institutions have restrictions on taking photographs for commercial exploitation, as part of the entrance ticket. Obtaining a property release for building interiors will make the images more saleable, as some clients, particularly advertising agencies, need one to avoid any interference with the use.

You do not need releases for animals, as privacy and publicity rights only apply to people. The exception to this is for photos of an animal that is a recognized character—a movie or TV character that might have independent copyright or trademark protection. This is based on the argument that the commercial use by an unlicensed entity might cause confusion as to sponsorship or interfere with an already licensed user.

Trademarks and trade dress Some objects or properties may be so distinctive that the owner may acquire trade dress or trademark rights, even if there is no copyright protection to the property. Generally, a violation of trademark rights occurs when the use of the mark in the photograph would cause confusion as to the source of the goods or services or imply an affiliation or

association. A good example of a trademarked property is the McDonald’s Golden Arches.

Symbols, like logos, make good source identifiers while most buildings do not, as the buildings don’t function as a mark. When you look at an iconic building, you think of the building itself and not a particular owner of goods and services. Similarly, a photograph of a building, without any other context, would never violate trademark rights, as it would just be descriptive of the building. A poster depicting The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland was not found to violate any trademark rights in the building itself, as the building did not function as a trademark, and the poster was not considered a trademark use. Generally, photographs of skylines would also not violate any trademarks rights, as there would be no confusion that the owner of any one building depicted was associated with the user of the photograph.

Nonetheless, in order to control licensing for certain goods and services, owners of some iconic buildings file trademarks covering distinctive features. Examples include the neon signage of Radio City Music Hall, the columns of the New York Stock Exchange, and the top of the Empire State Building. This does not mean that all uses of photographs would be prohibited, only those used to illustrate a business or product that might cause a consumer to believe there was an association with the registered mark.

Some objects may also acquire trade dress protection. Trade dress refers to product packaging, shape, or design that is distinctive and identifying, like the classic Coke bottle, the shape of certain classic cars, and some distinctive Apple electronic products. Not all uses would be restricted—only those that might imply an association between the owner of the product and the goods and services that image is illustrating. Direct product shots of distinctive items against a white background should be avoided. A stock photograph of a scene in which someone is using their phone, but where the phone is not the focus of the photograph, may not violate any trade dress rights.

Many stock agencies have restrictions regarding including these objects in images anyway. When shooting for broad rights commercial use, follow any submission guidelines and avoid problem areas, as not doing so will make it more difficult to license those images.

In fact, the general rule to avoid complicated release laws is to create original content that doesn’t rely on already recognizable people, places, and objects. Of course, this isn’t always an option. But hopefully with our handy guide, you’ll be able to better protect your images and reputation. ● ASPP.COM

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© NOÉ MONTES

SPECIALTY

Capturing the Color of Cuisine

BY KIMBERLY PHIPPS

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© NOÉ MONTES

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N JUNE 13, ASPP WAS LUCKY enough to attend an Annenberg Space for Photography studio talk at Skylight Studios in Los Angeles. Billed as a “visual and gustatory journey through food philosophy,” the event examined the creation of a cookbook—tentatively titled The Cook’s Almanac—from former Cooks County chefs, Dan Mattern and Roxana Jullapat, examining cuisine and recipes by how they’re presented visually.

In this book’s case, when photographer Noé Montes was looking for artistic inspiration, he took a cue from the masters. Not master chefs or even master photographers, but old-school master Baroque painters from 16th–century Spain. Beautiful still life paintings of luscious fruit and game fowl glowing with natural light, by the likes of Juan Sánchez Cotán and Luis Egidio Meléndez, show that appreciating the natural, rustic beauty of food from the farm to the table is nothing new.

So what kind of light does Montes use to imitate the look of the masters? The same kind that the painters used—natural sunlight. While the source of the light may be natural, in order to get just the right look and feel requires precision manipulation. Montes employs a host of deflectors, diffusers, and metallic gold and silver cards to get the light to hit in just the right spot and bring out the natural color and texture of the food.

Another practical hint to make the food look better?

“Turn off the house lights,” Montes advises. “It makes the food look gross.”

As the creator of many of the dishes being photographed, Jullapat says, “I remember thinking, What is Noé doing? when he’s moving a reflector an inch, a half inch… but then I would see the picture of the food on the monitor, and it would make sense.”

Another key to making the food look great is to leave it alone. There was a time in the history of food photography

Top: Pacific seafood soup. Bottom: Stuffed saddle of lamb.

when a lot of the ingredients would have to be shellacked or glued in order to stand up to hours of hot studio lights.

But one of the advantages of working so closely with the chefs is that the dishes could be brought to Montes immediately. The inherent speed of shooting digitally, and having immediate feedback, makes it possible for the food to be photographed in the same state as it would if you were preparing it yourself.

The other upside Montes says: “We got to eat a lot of it.”

The brilliant colors of pea tendrils and fillets are indeed naturally fresh and gorgeous. While it takes an expert to commit those exact colors to a photographed print, Montes knows he’s lucky to be working with such a quality product as a base.

“I have worked with Dan and Roxana for many years, and I know that they have a very holistic approach to their cooking,” Montes says. “They bring all of these ideas into their food and express them in an elegant way. I also know from working with them that they are true cooks, and they spend countless hours in the kitchen developing their craft. There is mutual trust and appreciation for each other’s work.”

© NOÉ MONTES

Local sea bass with Meyer lemon and pea shoot pesto.

Any advice for aspiring cookbook authors? For starters, Jullapat recommends that you have an agent— someone who can sell the book better than you can. No matter how good a writer, photographer, or chef you are, having an agent is key. But even with a fabulous agent, talented chefs, and beautiful photography, a cookbook is not a moneymaking venture. Even if the book is sold to a publisher—which is by no means guaranteed—there is rarely money to be made in the cookbook world. You’ll be lucky if you break even.

So if not for the money, why do it? For the love of the food itself, and for cookbooks. Mattern and Jullapat both admit to being “cookbook hoarders,” so it’s understandable that they would be passionate about creating one of their own. Says Mattern, “We have a point of view about food, and we want to share that with people.” And Noé Montes gets to share that vision through photography.

If you’re looking for The Cook’s Almanac, it’s not quite on shelves yet—still searching for a publisher and possibly a new title. Follow Montes’s blog (noemontes. com) for updates and to get a glimpse of his other, nonfood work, documenting Los Angeles life. ●

CALLING ALL PICTURE PROS!

COMMUNITY ADVOCACY EDUCATION If you create, edit, research, license, distribute, manage or publish visual content, ASPP is the place for you!

JOIN OR RENEW TODAY! www.aspp.com

American Society of Picture Professionals

CHAPTER CAPTURE © CORY LAWRENCE, 2015

DC/SOUTH NEW YORK MIDWEST

DC/South board member and art producer at Discovery Channel, Mary Priestland speaks to chapter members.

DC/SOUTH BEHIND THE SCENES WITH DISCOVERY PHOTO SERVICES

by Cory Lawrence On Wednesday July 22, 2015, the DC/South chapter went behind the scenes with Discovery Channel’s in-house photo services department. The event, held at PHOTOGROUP INC.’s studio in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, brought together fourteen members of Discovery’s photo team for an informal talk with thirty-five chapter members.

Karen Bovie, associate director of Photo Services, gave an overview of the three departments that make up the photo team’s producers, interactive producers, and operations.

Then the producers presented five different photo shoots they worked on and spoke about how the creative came about, how they found and hired photographers, and how they solved problems during the shoot. The operations team spoke last, giving a glimpse into the asset management system Discovery uses to house more than one million images. DC/South president Cory Lawrence thanked everyone for coming to the event and spoke briefly about the importance of ASPP membership. Barry Soorenko also talked briefly about services PHOTOGROUP INC. offers to the DC area photography community.

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NEW YORK BUSY SUMMER NIGHTS

by Darrell Perry At our July 1st Peer2Peer, the New York chapter talked of Taylor Swift’s scuffles with Apple and photographers claiming she was grabbing their rights. We also discussed Shutterstock’s deal with Variety and Women’s Wear Daily. The global stock agency will gain a beachhead in news and celebrity coverage, making itself a stronger competitor to Getty Images and hopefully creating a healthier marketplace. We also briefly addressed the current European Union investigation into anti-competitive social networking and Internet impediments. Government involvement in Google’s activities could have far-reaching effects in all Internet usage and copyright rules.

Later in the month, on July 16th, sixty NY members attended a panel hosted at and by Getty Images in New York. The panel included: Anna Dickson, deputy director of photography, Wall Street Journal; Wajmah Yaqubi, director of photography, Buzzfeed; and Matt Bishop, operations manager at Geometry Global (division of WPP).

Andrew Delaney, Getty Images’s director of creative content, was moderator.

© SAM MERRELL, 2015

Yaqubi highlighted that finding ownership of internetsourced material is very difficult. At the same time, she may be tasked with educating her colleagues about rights and usage. Educating content creators about the Terms of Service agreements for their social media posting pages is also growing in importance. Anna Dickson of WSJ is finding that authentication, rights acquisition, image provenance, taste level, and societal norms impact her decisionmaking at WSJ. WPP’s Matt Bishop finds that meeting budgets while also meeting trends can form the crux of his decision-making. All panelists spoke about “credibility”— the rawness of social media–sourced images that may seem more “real” and hence desirable than more polished and processed assigned imagery. Also noted: the importance of embedding stories that link back to the original posts, and how knowing your target audience’s response to content helps with decision-making. Often it’s faster and easier to access user-friendly social media than to wrestle with

APA President Tony Gale pops a selfie at the NY chapter summer bash— with photographer and social media consultant Ingrid Spangler and ASMP NY President Tom Donley.

CHAPTER CAPTURE © ROBERT E POTTER III REP3, 2015

© DARRELL PERRY, 2015

DC/SOUTH NEW YORK MIDWEST

(L to R) Matt Bishop (WPP), Anna Dickson (Wall Street Journal), and Wajmah Yaqubi (Buzzfeed) at the July 16 panel discussing the interface of modern photo publishing with the “new normal” of the growing social media environment. Andrew Delaney of Getty Images moderated ( far right).

Michael Liwanag, regional business manager for Extensis Portfolio.

Extensis is currently used to manage the digital assets of MTV, The National Gallery, and Yale University, among others.

cumbersome designs of photographers’ portfolio sites—a word of caution for those with unkempt sites.

The chapter closed out its busy July on the 21st with its annual Summer Bash, held in collaboration with the ASMP New York chapter. All were extremely grateful to the evening’s generous sponsors, including Science Source, Grant Heilman, DISSOLVE, age fotostock, Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard, SuperStock, Adorama, AgencyAccess, and Brooklyn Brewery.

is also a skilled photographer. After Chris’s copyright talk, digital asset management expert Michael Liwanag presented “Electronic File Storage, Retrieval and Workflow.”

Regional Business Manager for Extensis Portfolio, Liwanag covered the general benefits of DAM systems— how they enable users to find electronic files faster, control access to them, eliminate do-overs, and reuse and re-purpose files. Later, Judith (Judi) Buckardt, president and CEO of Buckardt Technologies, Inc. (dba Konsultek) talked about cybersecurity basics, informing the audience without frightening us. Buckardt encourages everyone to think in terms of “impact versus likelihood” when planning security. And don’t think that because you use a Mac instead of a PC, or don’t have a Facebook account, or are behind a Firewall, that you are safe from hackers: Judi recounted visiting a potential client and seeing passwords on post-it notes decorating most cubicle walls. She also pointed out that it’s essentially impossible to prevent hackers from breaking in, so you need to be able to detect and respond before your assets are compromised.

The Midwest chapter extends a huge “thank you” to the Education Day sponsors and encourages everyone to support them: Danita Delimont Stock Photography, ImageRights, Feldman & Associates, Lockridge Grindal Nauen, Bannor & Bannor, Konsultek, Custom Medical Stock Photo, and Bridgeman Images. ●

MIDWEST EDUCATION DAY

by Mary Ann Albanese Midwest members kicked off their summer at a daylong June 12th educational event in Chicago’s North Center neighborhood. Mike Fisher, co-founder of Custom Medical Stock Photo, was master of ceremonies, with topics including copyright, digital asset management (DAM), and computer security.

Chapter president Christopher K. Sandberg began the presentations with “Talking Copyright Blues: Unpublished Works, Fair Use, and Creative Commons.”

An expert in trademark and copyright protection, as well as utilities, technology, corporate, and Indian law, Chris is a partner at Lockridge Grindal Nauen in Minneapolis. He 56

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BOOKSHELF

Best new books on photography

Bruce Davidson, Untitled, 2012.

BOTH SIDES OF SUNSET: PHOTOGRAPHING LOS ANGELES Edited by Jane Brown and Marla Hamburg Kennedy Metropolis Books Hardback, 288 pages $75 LOS ANGELES WANTS to be noticed.

Few cities offer better people-watching. This need for notice is in part due to the fact that, despite its size and global import, it’s Johnny-come-lately as far as cities go. Its identity continues to shift, sometimes seismically, and there’s an awareness that it’s still learning about itself, trying to be more than some letters on a hillside.

Contravening this is Los Angeles’s appearance, which is not always easy

on the eye. It’s the archetype of the concrete jungle, made worse by an often-unforgiving sun. For every Chemosphere or Samuel-Novarro House, there are endless cul-de-sacs lined with Malvina Reynolds’s “little boxes.” At the risk of flogging an already dead horse, Los Angeles is a multi-story contradiction.

What makes Both Sides of Sunset such an interesting book, then, is how

often it deals with this problem literally head-on. The selections, some already iconic, some soon to be, have a tendency to be extremely straight ahead. Take for instance the long sequence at the book’s outset that deals mainly in architecture, be it the mundane, magisterial, or historic. In so many of the photos, you can picture the photographers setting up their shots for maximum centeredness and hear them say, I’m looking right at you, object that is only pretending to want privacy.

The other fascinating aspect is the inclusion of so many black-and-white photographs taken since the turn of the millennium. Daido Moriyama, Bruce Davidson, Larry Fink, Tomas T. Diaz, Rose-Lynn Fisher, and Amir Zaki all have strong work in this mode represented. Los Angeles is young enough to be home to things that were here fifty or sixty years ago.

You can’t go more than a few blocks without encountering something retro or vintage and it feels as if those photographing the city are aware that this black-and-white aesthetic plays with the notion of “when.”

The editors have done a good job in selecting photographs that ask questions, that expose, that play.

But, as is the city’s wont, sometimes the images don’t expose enough, and this head-on critique loses some of its steam. There’s a feeling of detachedness, evoked by coolhunting, that lacks urgency. The choices are someASPP.COM

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times glazed with an irony perhaps a shade too deep, and several times I caught myself responding to the images with a superficial “neat.”

I’ve feared the first time I would have to write critically about my adopted city. It’s a bewildering quicksand of a subject. Its default is refusal—to keep you at arm’s length, to rely on its alleged superficiality to maintain distance. But what Both Sides makes clear is that the city is always offering up its secrets. They’re just hiding in plain sight.

—JOHN W. W. ZEISER

HARRY GRUYAERT François Hébel Thames & Hudson Hardcover, 144 pages $65

Les Halles, Paris, France, 1985. © Harry Gruyaert/Magnum Photos

HARRY GRUYAERT has never wanted

to be anything but a “color photographer.” With an appropriately brilliant red cover and the deep blacks and saturated tints only Cibachrome can deliver, his new self-titled book is a decades-long document of this steadfastness.

As François Hébel reveals in his introduction, Gruyaert was always guided by color more than any other picture element. He spent years ruling out everything he did not want to do and did not want to be—leaving assistant positions with esteemed photographers and fashion-beat assignments—before burning out on a soulless form of photojournalism where one merely had to file the necessary images before knocking off for the day. For a photographer shooting in color in the 1960s–1980s, Gruyaert’s natural evolution should have taken him to advertising. Only Americans, like William Eggleston 60

Courtesy of Thames & Hudson

and Saul Leiter, could shoot in color and call it art. But Gruyaert pushed on, not because of a driving force, but because it only seemed natural to him.

This book—which spans his filmpredominant years to his recent digital adoption—is immediately pleasing to look at. If ever the definite science of color printing were important, it is now, with this book; Gruyaert’s style is highly dependent upon a reproduction of exact tints and shadows. More often than not, the tableaus he photographs feature busy scenes—the kinds of set-

AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PICTURE PROFESSIONALS

ups a production designer on a movie set would dread. The multiple textures and patterns and knickknacks seem as though they should clash, yet Gruyaert finds a way to make them work.

Take the image of the women and the red balloon on the cover. Silk, vinyl, canvas, cotton, nylon, leather, brick, wood, lace—all of these are present and vividly rendered with his color processes, so that even, or especially, the red balloon takes on a kind of lush velvet texture.

Throughout his images, people live in shadows. They sit by themselves in cafes, nap on ledges, and wait for someone to play a game of tennis.

There are so many moving pieces that the images should not work. In one, a restaurant owner talks on a telephone. Beside her, a big-screen TV broadcasts a Jerry Seinfeld stand-up act. In other photographers’ hands, dating an image with a television show (even if this particular show would live on in syndication forever) would seem cheesy.

But Gruyaert’s color processes seem to obscure any cheesiness, integrating that still shot on a TV screen into its scenery. It’s no wonder Gruyaert spent three years as a director of photography in television—another career he left behind.

Surprisingly effective in this book, a series of conceptual images from his experiments with photographing early color television appears before the introduction and sets up the reader for a break from the mundane. In a way, this setup serves as a lens for how we are supposed to view the images that follow—not as photojournalism but as art. Even though Gruyaert was accepted into the Magnum fold in 1982, he was not a widely popular candidate, partly because his “photojournalism” was not pure. For Gruyaert, no matter what he was photographing, it was always about the color.

Gruyaert’s collected images make for a lovely addition to the canon of color photographs. If you look at his work and think, “Looks like Eggleston,” look deeper. And pay attention to the reds. You’ll find yourself feeling, more than looking.

EXPERIMENTAL PHOTOGRAPHY: A HANDBOOK OF TECHNIQUES Edited by Luca Bendandi Thames & Hudson Hardcover, 240 pages $24.99 BEST SUITED FOR photographers who have grown up within the digital bubble, Experimental Photography is a well-designed handbook, combining simple instructions for thirty-two

Courtesy Thames & Hudson

hands-on techniques with eighteen interviews of artists, exploring the potential of those techniques. With an emphasis on the practical craft of photography and the artistic potential of everything from pinholes to wet-plate collodion, Experimental Photography embraces high and low, ending up with a useful resource for anyone looking to expand their photographic practice.

Briefly framed with reference to the nominal uniformity of digital technique and emphasis on realism— almost as if the editors struggled to advocate the flexibility and breadth of analog techniques without opposing them to digital photography—this book starts simply, with camera obscura and the basics of a wet-process darkroom. Instructions reveal a familiarity with the practice—hints like drilling a pinhole with a needle versus punching through; a broad gallery of different anthotype tones from fruits and vegetables—even while acknowledging that the complexities of materials and preferences generally require a substantial amount of trial and error

to reliably get the desired results.

Where Experimental Photography exceeds similar handbooks is through its editorial selection of fine artists working with the techniques described. Photograms may be the simplest darkroom technique, but Ruth Erdt transforms them into sculptural vignettes. Pinhole photography is within the reach of any photography student’s first day, but Wayne Martin Belger’s sculptural incorporation of skulls into stereoscopes or use of HIV+ blood as a red filter pushes the process beyond the print. And Binh Danh’s chlorophyll prints are the perfect medium for evoking how the Cambodian genocide became part of the landscape of the country.

One issue, however: the editors assume a high level of skill, but very little experience on the part of their readers.

Someone setting up a basic darkroom should likely practice for a while before jumping into processes with multiple ways to accidentally hurt oneself, like wet collodion. Similarly, the international scope of the project, with editors in America and across Europe, means assumptions about the availability of chemistry aren’t universally applicable, and alternatives aren’t explored in any depth. Photographers will still have to turn to the internet to figure out where to buy ether or cadmium bromide, if it’s available in their area at all.

With interest in pictorial and expressionist photography resurgent, Experimental Photography gives nascent photographers both the techniques and inspiration to move beyond Instagram filters into a lush, weird world of mad science and fine art.

—JOSH STEICHMANN

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PICTURE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PICTURE PROFESSIONALS

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CONTRIBUTORS / WRITING FOR THIS ISSUE ISSUE 3/2015

John W. W. Zeiser is a critic, poet, and occasional coffee roaster’s apprentice in Los Angeles. His earliest memory of writing was a poor imitation of Blake’s The Tyger that accompanied a finger painting assignment in elementary school. You can follow him @jwwz.

Nancy E. Wolff is a partner at Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP in New York. She practices copyright, trademark, and digital media law and offers full legal support to a wide range of clients. Ms. Wolff is the treasurer of the Copyright Society of the United States of America, a member of the Media Law Resource Center, chair of the ABA Intellectual Property Law Section on Copyright Legislation, and member of the Task Force on Piracy and Copyright Reform.

Michelle Weidman is a writer and editor currently based in the Bay Area. Her interests include visual art, cultural criticism, feminism in popular culture, and crime television. She is the founding member of Serpentine Magazine, an online cultural criticism publication. She works as the operations manager for Gygax Magazine.

Brooke Hodess is a freelance writer and editor living in Los Angeles. Her Instagram handle is @beedeebohemian.

Katie Buntsma was born and raised in a small town in rural Iowa and moved to the big city of Los Angeles to pursue a career in food photography. She is currently an art producer at Team One and continues to document her adventures and food explorations when she’s not working with the monsters of 2K or the vehicles of Lexus.

The first time Josh Steichmann got paid for photography was when he turned a snack shack at a summer camp into a 12’x12’ pinhole camera. Since then, he’s had a love for alternative processes, creative risk taking, and mural prints. Working as a writer, he’s covered everything from Elvis festivals to US Code 2257, and plenty in between.

As a photographer, he’s shown across Michigan, and can usually be found jumping Los Angeles fences with a homehacked Holga.

Kimberly Phipps is a photo editor and writer in Los Angeles. She enjoys creative food photography, especially styled craft cocktails. She often works for teen magazines, writes car reviews, and hangs out with her dog Trevor.

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© ROGER STEFFENS

LIFE IN FOCUS

The Asking Boy, © Rajiul Huda Dipto.

I

AM RAJIUL HUDA DIPTO, a student at East West Uni-

versity in Dhaka. Though I am a student in the English department, photography is a part of my soul. I started with a Kodak Colour Negative Camera, and then I jumped on my mobile phone. When my father saw what I was doing, he bought me a DSLR, which I used to take this image. I was on the roof of my house, hanging around and trying to capture the evening in my lens. I saw the boy come onto the veranda and look around. Then he looked down. Below, some children were playing some game. He

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kept looking at the children but didn’t go. I got the moment; he is wishing to play with those children but can’t.

He is bound by something. Something he can’t break. I don’t know the reason why he doesn’t go. I think it is because his parents will not allow him to play with street boys. So he is content watching others playing. This photo tells the story of many other children here in Bangladesh.

They can’t play or venture out on their own because their parents think the environment is not secure for their child.

So they stay on the veranda, safe but bored. ●

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