livebooks blog

An image from Alan's coverage of the Sichuan Earthquake last year. Photo by Alan Chin for Newsweek

Making images for BAGnewsNotes is a unique way of working with an editor. Although it’s Michael’s site, we’re both pioneering a new format, so I have more of a stake. It’s more of a cooperative situation rather than me working for a boss.

Traditional media can be very hierarchical. I’ve had a lot of assignments when I felt like the editors were my bosses and I couldn’t offend them or differ from their conception of the story too much. Of course, when you trust them and they trust you, then you can really speak freely and there’s a give and take. That’s how I’ve felt with Michael. He’s comfortable criticizing what I’m doing, and I feel the same way talking to him. So we have more ability to do that than might be typical in our industry.

I do have to point out, though, that sometimes there are great people, with imagination and vision, like Jamie Wellford, international photo editor at Newsweek, with whom I also have that relationship, because fundamentally it’s just good people that really matters.

Also I know that we can screw up more more, because we’re still at the beginning of this. If we make mistakes, it’s not so horrible because we are trying to break new ground. It’s not going to be perfect; it’s just the two of us. We can’t be perfect in everything we do. And that’s OK in a way that it wouldn’t be for Time or Newsweek.

I also believe that the work I’ve been doing with Michael is indicative of changes in traditional media, where photographers are being seen more as reporters and analysts. Last year I was in China and I covered the Sichuan earthquake. Because I ended up being on the phone a lot with editors and reporters, they started giving me credit on print stories, in part because they have to be more accountable about giving credit than they used to be.

Increasingly, whoever is out there, if you can verbally report on a situation or figure out what’s going on, that’s going to go into the mix, because things happen so fast now. It’s not like the editors and reporters have the luxury they once had to wait until the end of the week to figure everything out. They have to have the story together very quickly. Even weekly magazines don’t have the long deadlines that they used to.

As a photographer, you’re out there seeing things. And the desk views your pictures relatively quickly, which is another source of information for them. In fact, not only are we becoming reporters, we’re also becoming our own technicians. A lot of photographers I know record audio to do multimedia as well as take still photos. We’re becoming this one-person multimedia insanity. You can’t possibly be at your very best trying to do three or four tasks at once. But I think in some ways it’s good, if it means photographers are being taken more seriously as observers and reporters.

On the other hand, nobody is paying us more for our increased responsibilities, and that’s true not only for photographers but for everyone in this era of bankrupt news organizations and newspapers closing down. And ultimately that is the bottom line: if there’s not enough money to pay us or our expenses, then the coverage simply won’t exist, whether in traditional or new media. Enthusiasm, volunteerism, and the sheer love of our craft can only take us so far. It is my hope that we figure this out sooner rather than later; it’s all over, otherwise.

Miki Johnson: Tell me about the project you submitted for the 2008 Emerging Photographer Grant.

Sean Gallagher: The project I submitted for the Emerging Photographer’s Grant, The Silent Wave: Desertification in Western China, developed as a result of an article I read online in the summer of 2007, highlighting increased desertification in the north and west of China. My educational background is in the biological sciences, and I’ve always been particularly interested in environmental issues. This article caught my interest and I started to think about ways to do a photo-essay on the subject.

Around this time, I was regularly reading David Alan Harvey’s ‘Road Trips’ blog where he announced in July 2007 that there would be a chance for one photographer to have him review their portfolio and be showcased on his new blog. There was no money involved at that point. I decided to seize the opportunity and headed to China’s western deserts for a couple of weeks to shoot the story I had been thinking about.

On my return, I put an edit of 20 images together and submitted them to David. A little later, David announced that he had secured funding to award a $5,000 grant to the chosen photographer and he increased the possible number of submitted images from 20 to 40. Although I was tempted to add more, I stuck with my original tight edit and resisted fleshing it out with possibly weaker images.

MJ: Why was the grant important to your work? Did you use the money to finish the desertification project or to work on other projects?

SG: The grant has been incredibly important to me, especially at this point in my career. There are so many great photographers, both established and emerging, all competing for work. The grant allowed me to free myself from that competition for a while and just focus on shooting. At the time I was awarded the grant, recent unrest in Tibet meant that many of the areas I had previously photographed were temporarily off-limits to non-Chinese. I therefore decided to concentrate on other environmental issue such as dropping water levels in the Yangtze River, the condition of animals in China’s zoos, and air pollution in Beijing. I have also since had the chance to return to the desertification work. I see this as quite a long-term project and hope to make repeat trips to various locations across China.

MJ: Did you get additional work from the exposure granted by the award?

SG: The increased exposure my work has received has definitely been one of the main benefits of receiving the Emerging Photographer’s Grant. David’s reputation precedes him, so being linked in this way has provided me with many opportunities. I also made the effort to travel in 2008 to Festival of the Photograph in the U.S. and Visa Pour l’Image in France, both for the first time. The Emerging Photographer’s Grant was officially announced at Festival of the Photograph, so being there in person was a great experience and an opportunity to meet many people who had just become aware of my work. I have also recently secured further funding from the Pulitzer Center On Crisis Reporting to continue my work on desertification. My application for this was based partly on my recent personal work, much of which was funded by David’s Emerging Photographers Grant.

MJ: Did you know David before the grant and did he talk about why he had selected your work?

SG: I had met David previously while taking one of his workshops in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2004. I traveled from Japan, where I was working as an English teacher at the time. On presenting my portfolio to him, I distinctly remember him being very critical of it and barely liking any pictures. It ended up being the most valuable workshop I have taken. Getting an honest, critical opinion really spurred me on, as well as David’s encouragement to approach photography in our own way. After that I was then independently selected for the one-year paid internship program at Magnum, in their London office — another invaluable experience.

For the 2009 Emerging Photographers Grant, a panel of judges, sans David, will choose the recipient. For the 2008 grant, however, it was David who made the decision as the whole concept of the grant was in its infancy. In January 2008, David announced I was the recipient of the grant and commented on his blog, “i saw this essay as stylistically powerful and journalistically relevant…” However, as can be seen from David’s new online magazine Burn, he has an eclectic taste in photography; for the grant, I think any style has an opportunity.

Rose Wood ©Dietmar Busse

Q: What was it like working entirely on your own?

A: It was both very exciting and very scary. Exciting because I felt free to create and explore whatever I wanted. There was no one in the room other than me. No one with any expectations or agenda. I played around with flowers and painted all night long, and it was really very exhilarating at times. Many nights I didn’t even want to go to sleep and just worked and worked.

At the same time it was very frightening. No client, no editor, no agent for feedback or guidance. And then, though I lived in a small, cheap place in Brooklyn, I still had to pay the rent. This was not the ’60s and my savings were running out fast, since I was spending lots of money on flowers and photo supplies. But somehow I always managed to get by and I saw my work evolving.

Even though I was working on my own, I did stay in touch with a few people in the commercial world who liked my work. One art director had my flower photographs all over his office, and one day this lady who was a book publisher saw them and within a matter of days I was working on my first book.

Robert Kitchen ©Dietmar Busse

Q: What was the book publishing process like for you?

A: It was exhilarating to think that the work I was doing would end up in a book. The difficulty was that when I was approached by the publisher, they wanted all the material immediately in order to make the deadline for the spring market. One moment I was just minding my business figuring out what images I wanted to make, and the next I was on a rushing to deliver my first book. That was quite stressful, especially since I tried to make more new photos while the creative director was already working on the layout.

Everything was being rushed and finally sent off to the printer for the first proof — then suddenly everything was put on ice. Why? Because it was early 2003 and it was evident that George Bush was going to start a war. Consequently the companies involved with the book project were suddenly not sure if it was the right time. This went on for awhile and then, again suddenly, the publisher decided to just go ahead, which was great. Unfortunately there was absolutely no time for any corrections and the raw layout became the book.

It was not the ideal scenario, and I was quite unhappy about that. It took me some time to be able to appreciate all the good things that came from the book. I think the experience will serve me very well for my second book, which is in the making. After the first book was published, I also got some nice write ups, and, through that exposure, I was contacted by a gallery, and offered a group show, which later turned into a 2-person show.

When blogs swipe your images, you might get more than traffic coming back to you. ©Lou Lesko

For the last year and a half I’ve been enthusiastically pushing photographers to let their images get swiped for non-advertising online use as long as there is an attribution link back to their site. I anticipate blogs rapidly becoming the main sources for news online, so the more exposure blogs swiping your images get, the more exposure your work will get via attribution. What I didn’t consider initially is the potential guilt-by-association factor if your image is used with a bogus or inflammatory blog post.

There has been a rise in criticism of high profile blogs posting stories that violate expected ethical considerations in the past few months. Popular blogs that have risen to the top through marketing and hiring good writers who are assumed to adhere to a journalistic code of ethics. However, unless stated specifically, there may be no ethics involved at all. And to be fair, even blogs that do subscribe to an ethics code can get it wrong. Blogging is still a young medium — these issues will eventually be resolved but right now they’re still being worked out.

My concern is that a swipe of one of my images could result in my name being associated with a blog post with which I have moral or ethical conflict. I know I can’t have have it both ways. I can’t pray for link exposure and then get pissy when I get it because I don’t like the blog that gave it to me. That’s like lobbying National Geographic for a foreign photo assignment in Russia, then pouting because they send you in the dead of winter.

What are your thoughts? If a blog whose content you disagree with ran an image of yours with a highly contentious story, but you got a lot of exposure, would you be upset, maybe even contact them to have your image removed? Or would you be thrilled to have your online presence elevated because of the huge click-through rate to your site?