Photography Then, Now, and Tomorrow – Part 1 of 3

January 8, 2016 ·

Richard Sexton

C070 — Oak Avenue, Wormhole Plantation – © Richard Sexton

Photography Then is installment one of a three part essay devoted to the practice of photography and its relative place in popular culture and the art world over the last several decades. This essay is a bit different for me in that it isn’t about technological innovation or aesthetic issues per se. It’s about the evolution of the practice of photography—what it means to the lay person, how it’s faring as a profession, its impact on society. I’m focusing on an evolution that’s happening so slowly it isn’t perceptible day to day, but the evolution reflects huge changes once you look back over several decades and project forward into photography’s potential future.

My personal history with photography began seriously when I bought my first SLR in December 1972. I decided almost immediately that I wanted to be a photographer. By the late 70s I had a fledgling commercial photography practice in San Francisco. I’ve been at it ever since, monetizing my photographic pursuits in a wide variety of ways, adapting to market conditions, changes in media and technology, and the whims of the buying public. It’s been an intriguing ride that’s taken me further than I ever thought possible. In many ways, this essay is a reflection of those years and all the changes along the way. But, I didn’t want this to be just about what’s happened to me and the things I’ve observed along the way. I’m just one photographer. Other photographers have had other experiences, their practice has been different, and most importantly, they may have different opinions about where photography is now and where its headed. So, in putting this essay together, I reached out to a handful of photographers I’ve known and worked with over the years. They have all had, and in some cases continue to have, very successful careers in photography. You may not have heard of them, but they are representative of the practice of photography in a broad spectrum kind of way. Because they’ve shared their observations and opinions with me expressly for the purpose of this essay, it’s important for you to know a little bit about them so you can better understand and appreciate their perspectives, which will be spread across all three segments of the essay. Depending on when they started their careers and what their insights were, and also the directions the interview took, their commentary is distributed asymmetrically. Some are more prominent in segment one. Others will be more prominent in segments two and three. There are five photographers, in all. In alphabetical order here they are:

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Mike Blumensaadt began a lengthy photographic career in 1960 working in a camera shop while he was in college. He graduated with a BFA in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1967, when RIT was one of only four schools he could find in the U. S. that offered such a degree. Mike became an editorial and corporate photographer first in Atlanta in the 1960s and then in San Francisco beginning in the late 1970s. In the early 80s, Mike and I were briefly in business together in San Francisco. He is now retired.

Alex MacLean is a Boston-based photographer who began his career in 1974. He has a graduate degree in architecture from Harvard and is also a licensed pilot. He photographs the natural and built environments from the air. He has authored and/or photographed 11 books; has a worldwide client list; and in 2004-05 was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome. One of Alex’s book contributions was a collaboration with yours truly. He did the aerial photographs for my book Vestiges of Grandeur, which was published by Chronicle Books, San Francisco, in 1999. He upstaged me in a number of ways in this project. Alex is still practicing photography today.

David Rae Morris is a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker, who began his career in the mid-1970s. His father is the noted writer and editor Willie Morris. David Rae is a neighbor of mine in New Orleans. We have exhibited alongside each other at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans and we have competed against each other for a New Orleans Press Club award. In recent years David Rae has transitioned from a stills photographer to a documentary filmmaker.

Myko is a New York photographer who goes strictly by his nickname in both his personal and professional life. He was born and raised in New York, where photography is an industry, more than anything else. He came up through the ranks in a city that was the center of a vast, and vastly competitive, photographic marketplace. In addition to his photographic practice, Myko has developed and marketed Multistitch, a stitching back, which enables digital backs and cameras to be used on traditional film view cameras. I met Myko through Luminous Landscape when I wrote a review of Multistitch. We have had many conversations in recent years regarding how digital technology has impacted the commercial practice of photography.

Carter Tomassi had a lengthy photography and film career working primarily in post-production in Atlanta, New York, and San Francisco, and is now retired. In the late 60s and early 70s Carter worked in a non-paid capacity (as everyone did) for The Great Speckled Bird, the storied underground hippie newspaper of Atlanta. Carter received a National Endowment for the Arts photography grant in 1977. He ended his career in 2001 as the last operator of a film animation camera in the San Francisco Bay Area, and with his retirement the digital transition was complete in that market. Carter was the first person to give me a full time job in photography.So, with the backstory out of the way, here is segment one:

PHOTOGRAPHY THEN

kodachrome

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s
a sunny day I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away
—Paul Simon from his song Kodachrome, 1973

Eastman Kodak Co. introduced Kodachrome in 1935. The last emulsion was discontinued in 2009. All processing of the film ended in 2010. In January 2012 Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and subsequently sold off its still photographic film manufacturing business.

My photography career began in the spring of 1975 when I was hired by Carter Tomassi as a black and white printer in a small custom lab at Wallis Kamera Haus, Atlanta’s Leica camera dealer. The pay was $100 per week. I had graduated from Emory University a couple months before, where for a year I had been chief photographer and photography editor for the student newspaper, The Emory Wheel. It was a haphazard volunteer endeavor. Just prior to my first paid photographic gig at Wallis Kamera Haus, I had submitted an application and portfolio to join Nexus Gallery, an upstart, non-profit, co-op photography gallery and the only place in Atlanta where photography was exhibited at the time. Mike Blumensaadt and Carter Tomassi were already members at that time. It was a narrow, contested vote, but I was admitted. This was hardly auspicious, but with no formal training in photography to that point, it was a beginning.

Richard Sexton at Nexus Gallery, 1975. Photo by Mike Blumensaadt

I had grown up in a small southwest Georgia town of 1800 people with no art museums, no art galleries, and there were no art classes offered in the only high school in the county. I knew about photography through the picture magazines my parents subscribed to. There was Life and Look, National Geographic, Southern Living, and news magazines like Time and Newsweek. They brought the world to my small town door step. I became a photographer largely because of these magazines, and not only that, I wanted to experience the larger world first hand and to photograph it, because of these magazines. Their impact was profound.

By December of 1972, when I was a sophomore at Emory, I decided a good camera was something I really wanted. Many fellow students had 35mm cameras—Minolta’s, Honeywell Pentax’s, Canonet’s, and Nikkormat’s. An SLR body and normal lens could be had for as little as $200. There were camera clubs and magazines devoted to the hobby of photography. It was fashionable. Any campus nerd could get a date with an MGB and an SLR tucked into the glove box. My mother told me a camera could be my Christmas present that year. I should shop around Atlanta and find a suitable camera before Christmas break and she would pay for it. I sought advice from my uncle, who ran the photo lab nearby at the University of Georgia, who told me the camera brand most professionals used was Nikon and that was the one to get if I wanted a real “pro” camera. He also suggested that I avoid a run of the mill “normal” lens for it. I should get a macro lens, which would be more versatile and facilitate a greater range of photographic possibilities. I eventually purchased a Nikon Photomic FTN with a 55mm Micro-Nikkor lens. The tandem commanded the outrageous sum of $500. By the time I had driven back to my dorm room with the camera and read the instruction manual, I decided I had to be a professional photographer. After all, I had spent way too much money on way too much camera. There was no other choice. But, it wasn’t just about having gone over budget. I fantasized about becoming a photographer because photography held a mark of prestige. It was a career many wanted and few would achieve. I wanted to be on the pages of those picture magazines my parents, and millions of other Americans, subscribed to and perused every week.

There was a mystique to the SLR in the 60s and 70s. They were not just the iPods of their day. They were the professional tools that created the photo essays in the picture magazines, the latest album cover art, the photos on the front pages of the daily newspapers, the fashion ads in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and increasingly, the prints on the walls of galleries and museums. The modern camera was a cutting edge tool impacting and chronicling the contemporary era. To have one and to know how to operate one, was a mark of accomplishment. It fit right in with the component stereo system, the jazz albums in the cabinet beneath, and the copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses you had never quite managed to get through, but it’s place on the bookshelf meant you understood its literary importance and were still trying. You may not have mastered black and white printing yet either, let alone be getting assignments for Vogue, but you owned the right camera for it, should that day ever arrive. There was a cultural importance associated with a career in photography that had been building for years. By the 70s it had reached a crescendo.

The foundation for photography’s stature and relevance of the 70s was laid in the 50s and 60s. Mike Blumensaadt began his career during that time. Before he enrolled at RIT, he was a student at Georgia Tech, and that’s when in the early 60s he worked part-time as a salesman at Wing’s Camera. From behind the counter he met many of the working photographers in Atlanta, including Jay Leviton, whom he would eventually work for. Leviton was one of a handful of Atlanta photographers doing freelance work for the major national magazines, as well as local corporate and advertising clients that were emerging in a city that before WWII only held the prospect of portrait and wedding work, or a staff position at the newspaper. By the late 60s Mike was doing freelance editorial work himself. The typical day rate was $150, plus expenses. Rights issues were still being worked out. By the 70s, with the help of professional photographic organizations like ASMP and NPPA, rights were sorted out in the photographer’s favor. The photographer was the owner of the work created and the commissioning magazine had first-time or one-time rights, after which the photographer could re-market the work at will. Stock photography would became a major source of additional income for working photographers thereafter. Photographer friendly ownership rights held sway until the 90s when they began a slow erosion.

David Rae Morris, who began his career as a photojournalist in the 80s, was working as a freelance photographer for Associated Press in the early 90s. By the late 90s, he terminated that relationship, primarily because of rights issues. The new AP freelance contract, which came out in 1996, was the beginning of the end. In summary, this contract stipulated that AP owned the rights to all the work. Though they didn’t use the dreaded “work for hire” language that’s what the terms amounted to. David Rae recounted that when he began at AP his editor called him aside and said that the vast majority of the work he did for AP could be resold at will, but that if he got an image that was highly newsworthy, then that one belonged to AP. The editor went further with a hypothetical example: If the president comes to New Orleans, and you photograph him, do what you want with the photos. But, if the president is shot while he’s in New Orleans, and you get a photo of it, that image belongs to AP exclusively. You can’t re-market it, or profit from it, directly. In a nutshell, this meant photographers could keep the lower value work for themselves, but AP wanted the high value stuff exclusively. It was an onerous deal that reversed hard fought gains from the 1960s. It was the handwriting on the wall foretelling the death of traditional media, which was making less and less money. AP continues to struggle financially today. As rights agreements for photographers became more problematic, the balance sheets for major newspapers were tanking. Magazines began closing up shop at an alarming pace, as well.

[To be continued. . .Check back tomorrow for the second post]

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Richard Sexton

See all articles by Richard Sexton

Richard Sexton is a fine art and media photographer whose work has been published and exhibited worldwide. He has been published in magazines such as Abitare, Archetype, Louisiana Cultural Vistas, Photographer’s Forum, and View Camera. His most recent book, Creole World, published in 2014 by The Historic New Orleans Collection, is the 12th book he has authored, co-authored, or photographed. Previously published titles include a monograph, Terra Incognita: Photographs of America’s Third Coast, published by Chronicle Books, San Francisco, in 2007. Chronicle Books also published the best selling New Orleans: Elegance and Decadence in 1993 and Vestiges of Grandeur: The Plantations of Louisiana’s River Road in 1999. To date Sexton has over 300,000 books in print. In 1997 Sexton curated the exhibit Sidney Bechet: A World of Jazz 1897-1997, which commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the influential jazz musician’s birth. Sexton has had major solo museum exhibitions at the Frost Art Museum in Miami, FL, (2015); the Pensacola Museum of Art in Pensacola, FL (2015); The Historic New Orleans Collection (2014); the Polk Museum of Art in Lakeland, Florida (2014); the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, MS (2010); the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (2007 and 2005); among others. Sexton’s photographs are included in the permanent holdings of The Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, LSU Museum of Art, Polk Museum of Art, Frost Art Museum, Pensacola Museum of Art, and numerous private collections. In 2014, Richard Sexton received the Michael P. Smith Award for Documentary Photography from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Also in 2014, he was an award recipient in American Photography magazine’s Latin America Fotografia 3 annual.