Truth and Ubiquity

Joel Sternfeld
Attorney with laundry, corner Bank and West 41 street, NYC 1988
Museum Folkwang, Essen © Joel Sternfeld courtesy Pace/Mac Gill Gallery, New YorkC-Print138 x 111 cm



“Photography is truth.” once said the French director Jean-Luch Godard , but who owns this truth? The photographer? The subject? The image itself? Why have we come to expect truth from photography in the first place? Staging Authenticity. Photographic Stories from the Street and the Studio, the course led by artist and lecturer Joy Gregory aims to explore these questions.


The emergence of photography revolutionized our way of seeing the world. Actual events could be represented with a device that allowed for a recording of the refraction of light, we could literally write with light. The fact that the image was framed and exposed in a certain way by the photographer did little to deter the people who attributed the unquestionable veracity of the image to the optical device. Doesn't that amount to saying that the brush did the painting rather than the painter? Although that awry reasoning has long since been deconstructed and invalidated, it still has a recalcitrant hold on the people's imagination.


Documentary photography is the genre that might be the most problematic with regards to questions of truth. Street & Studio. An Urban History of Photography, the current exhibition at Tate Modern (22 May until 31 August 2008) testifies to the overlap between a documentary function, requiring some notion of truth, and an aesthetic one, privileging form. The juxtaposition of images originally meant to record facts and events with slickly composed portraits also raises the following questions: what is the difference between art and document? Do these genres have a different visual language? Should they be displayed and used differently? Needless to say that Staging Authenticity will address these interrogations over the next few weeks.


In order to anchor our thoughts about truth and photography with examples, we moved from the seminar room to the gallery in order to take a good look at the images of the pioneers of documentary photography: Lewis Hine who documented child labour; Arnold Genthe who took a particular interest in San Francisco's Chinatown before the earthquake of 1908; Paul Strand who developed his practice around the candid image. Encouraged to comment on the images, one person noted that the titles of the works in Genthe's Chinatown series had a racist connotation. Although, admittedly, the portrait of a reclining oriental man bearing the title Dead to the World. Opium Fiend was not exactly an example of subtlety, this comment appeared to generate a flurry of discomfort. The “truth” that Genthe chose to represent was very much of its time, not burdened by political correctness, and resonated quite differently in the current context.


So truth in photography requires a certain exercise in constructivism (or reconstructivism if such a thing existed) in that not only do you have to consider the point of view of the photographer, but that of the subject, the context in which it was taken and the time in which you are encountering the image are just as important. In other words, forget the 1000 words that a photograph can apparently summon. If truth is what you are looking for, you might have to think in terms of a 1000 points of view. And even then you might be surprised: we encountered a portrait of Arnold Genthe holding his camera... and the photograph was attributed to him. Perhaps next week we will talk about ubiquity.

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Mind Your T&Cs - Getting it Right

Pound for Pound, © The Forum, May 2008

Shoot London offered the chance to get snapping in a fun way but it is also a commercial venture and teams were offered the opportunity to submit their work to its online photo library website Shoot Bank which is currently in production.

If you sign a contract make sure you understand all the terms. Thankfully, the Shoot London team provided an A4 sheet giving a brief definition of Royalty Free (RF), which is the only licence option they offered contributors. However, there is another licensing model in use, which offers greater control, and that's Rights Managed (RM). I urge anyone taking photographs for competitions or events to read the T&Cs carefully and get savvy about what's on offer; this includes knowing the difference between the common licensing models in use, copyright and model release issues. Here's why...
Shoot Bank is using a Royalty Free (RF) model for the photos from its Shoot Experience events and competitions.

What is the difference between RF and RM?
The basic distinction is that a Rights Managed license is defined by USE, whereas Royalty Free is a license defined by UNIT.

Rights Managed (RM) license fees are based on specific USE. Since all uses are recorded, clients will know ahead of time if there are any conflicts or concerns. The RM model allows clients to license an image with varying degrees of exclusivity, such as by category or geography in a specified time period.

Royalty Free (RF) licenses are based on UNITS and the RF license fee is essentially a standardized ‘purchase price’ for that unit. A unit could be a single image, a collection of images, or even a subscription period allowing unlimited access to images. The terms of an RF license grant clients virtually unlimited usage rights, so that the same image can be used by any company for any number of uses with few restrictions.
(These definitions are from the Pro-Imaging website page Stock Licensing Models. Accessed 29/05/2008 )

RM offers more protection and control over use. When a RM license is purchased it is good for that use only and for a limited length of time.

Copyright is not transferred with either the royalty-free or rights-managed license. Contrary to what some suggest, RF images are licensed; the license simply requires no future royalties (license fees) to be paid for extended use or if the image is used in various ways.

Images of people (and in some cases, property) without releases, should be licensed RM to control unauthorized commercial use.
(These points are from Acclaim Images – stock photography website. Accessed 29/05/2008)

The T&Cs for Shoot Bank stated that: This license means that the photograph is brought for a one-off fee that is "at a chosen size" where "the buyer is free to use it in as many ways (within permitted guidelines) as they wish. Other buyers may also buy the same RF rights to the photo - so one buyer cannot buy exclusive rights to a photo. With RF licensing only, these photos are likely to be used on websites, in brochures and flyers, not for large-scale advertising campaigns.

"It is likely that you have appeared in one of your photos from today's event. In order to sell photos commercially with recognisable people in them we need consent from the person in the photo. Shoot Bank will give buyers the information to ensure they use your photos in the appropriate way. They will not be permitted to use photos containing recognisable people in any way that may be seen as derogatory or offensive towards the person/people in the photo."

One clue in the day’s event, Out of sight, Out of mind, was realised by some teams by photographing a homeless man and his dog sitting on the walkway along the Thames. I don’t know how many people actually asked the man for permission to take his photograph or even explained what they were doing but it is a point that needs to be made as it is raises ethical and moral questions regarding what one photographs and how. Photographers need to be aware and sensitive especially when 60 groups descend on the same places causing bewildered shopkeepers and locals at Gabriel’s Wharf to ask The Forum team “What’s going on? Why are there so many people running around taking photographs?” If photography is all about communication then it helps to get the basics right.

Furthermore, without the man’s consent, i.e. through getting him to sign a model release form, photographs in which he is clearly recognisable cannot be exploited commercially. This refers to non-press use of the images, however, taking a picture of someone in a public place for press purposes is not problematic. In fact, the right to take photographs in public, including street photography, is subject to on-going debate, especially in the light of Metropolitan Police anti-terrorism campaigns as posted on iN-PUBLic's blog. I will look at this in detail in a future post as it ties in neatly with the Tate's current exhibition and course programme Photography in the Street and Studio

The photo library also wants exclusive rights to sell these images. Payment is at a 50:50 split, divided between all team members (that is a team of four).

Reading through the Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) and after a discussion with the other members, I was unwilling to submit images to Shoot Bank. I have written and reported on issues around photo libraries, rights grabs and Intellectual Property for consumer magazines and have reported on conferences, such as the NUJ Photographers conference where invited organisations including the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies (BAPLA) and the Designer and Artists Copyright Society (DASCS) debated these issues. I am also a member of the London Freelance Branch of the National Union of Journalists.

It is up to the individual to make a decision but it should be an informed one. In an age of increasing media convergence where authors need to keep up-to-date with trends and legislation, the old adage seems pertinent: Forewarned is forearmed. What do you think?

Useful links to relevant organisations and articles:
Stock Artists Alliance (SAA)
Beyond the Lens
Pro-Imaging
National Union of Journalists
British Journal of Photography
NUJ London Freelance Photographers' section
Richard Dedomenici whose art shenanigans joined The Forum for the day


Definitions of:
Royalty Free
Rights Managed
Microstock

Original document in PDF SAA White Paper

UK British Council promotes Rights Grabbing Competition

Making money from stock photos

A few things you should know about copyright
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The streets are paved with gold!

Well, that of the photographic, rather than the Dick Whittington variety at least. As the Tate Modern’s current exhibition Street and Studio amply demonstrates, the camera and the street have a longstanding affiliation, with many photographers deriving their inspiration from the highways and byways of metropolises the world over.

Shoot London, organised in collaboration with Shoot Experience, challenged participants to produce a series of images from the concrete pathways threading the environs of the Tate Modern – with the negligible qualifications of a six-hour timeframe and a specific set of encoded directions. Undaunted, the Forum team set out on a race (gentle amble after chatting about ‘tactics’ for at least an hour over coffee) to decipher the photographic treasure trail that had been laid for us, armed with three cameras (one of which we knew how to use), a mangy but trusty A-Z, a plastic fish and a fake ear (props, not private peccadilloes).





Ten clues would lead us, and the sixty or so other competing teams, to ten different locations along the river - and at each location we had to take a photograph. This all sounded straightforward enough, but became much less so as we desperately attempted to create an image which simultaneously demonstrated we had cracked the riddle, captured a specific sense of place, and found an innovative way of looking at bits of London as wearily au-fait with the photographer’s lens as St Paul’s and Borough Market.

As with any set task, the parameters were at once limiting and librating. The most successful images to emerge from the days hunting were those that found a humorous way of re-inventing the clue – such as the woman who lay down gamely on the bank of the river Thames whilst her team mates endowed here with a pair of wings and a halo in the surrounding sand (Clue: ‘Gabriel’s Wharf’, of course) – or those which captured a moment of spontaneity, like the simple but effective image of three figures leaping on the Millennium Bridge silhouetted against their umbrellas.



Yet whilst the rule of the day was fun and enjoyment, there were some interesting things to come out of the slideshow showing everyone’s images that rounded off the end of the day. It was fascinating to see the details that other people had picked up on - and, despite having scoured our brains for new interpretations and alternative shots, it was revealing (and a little chastening) to see how many times the same angles and ideas were repeated across other submissions. It was also particularly informative to notice the capacity of tiny differences – in depth, tone and composition – to differentiate two photographs of the same subject and cause you to dismiss one in favour of the other. An enjoyable, if exhausting day, there were more than a few little technical and conceptual gems to mull over and bear in mind during the next encounter with a camera.




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