This past February, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City launched "It's Time We Met," a visitor-contributed photography contest. Visitors submitted almost one thousand photographs taken in the Museum's Main Building on the Upper East Side or at The Cloisters further uptown.
Of the almost one thousand submissions, the Museum's panel of judges selected two winning photographs and five runners-up. In addition to various prizes, the winners' photographs joined the 8 images selected from Flickr (including the image to the right, submitted by davidabroad via Flickr) for the citywide "It's Time We Met" marketing campaign.
The NY Times Arts Beat writer Carol Vogel wrote a brief description of this campaign on February 9th, 2009, and while the post was merely descriptive the commentary following was fierce, and divided among two general camps: the professional photographers and others who are upset by the launch of a major campaign utilizing amateur (and presumably free or very low cost) images, and those who are excited by this new level of engagement by a venerable arts institution. Quick excerpts from the comment postings listed below:
From Lars on 2/4/09: "well, as a photographer who is attempting to make a living from photography, this under cuts my living. the pat on the back the Met is giving to these photographers is an insult. as for “no one is losing money on the deal,” this is not true. the Met is saving money, as each image, if rights purchased from a working photographer, would be worth +/- $1,500.00 USD each. i wonder how many Met employees work for free? i mean, how generous of them this would be."
From Stretchphotography.com on 2/4/09: "Rather than the photo “languishing unseen” had the photographer reserved her/his federally protected copyrights as creator of the image, perhaps he/she might have actually been paid a nickel by the Met for usage of the image. Rather than “no one… losing money on the deal,” this is another example of how photography is being devalued not by the technology that allows the public to create and share images, but by large corporate interests which leverage that technology to make a buck off someone else’s creativity. Commercial photographers, artists, and independent creators everywhere lose money on this “deal,” and others like it. Heaven forbid that a creator would actually be paid proportionate to the benefit that [insert name of corporation here] gains from the appropriation of her/his image. If you think this is such a good deal, IP, tell your mortgage company you want to pay them with “exposure;” you may reconsider its value."
From Audrey Horn on 2/4/09: "Everyone complaining about how the Met isn’t generous because they’re not paying the photographers should also remember that the met is practically free for everyone to visit. In addition, all of the exhibitions are free as well as many of their educational programs. The Met is not a corporation, it’s a non-profit organization… a museum… it would be a different story if Carnival cruises did something like this but I see this campaign as an effort from the museum to develop a community."
From Andrew Slayman on 2/4/09: "As a photographer, I agree that photographers should be paid “proportionate[ly] to the benefit” their clients reap from the use of their photographs. (I also believe that elementary-school teachers should be paid three times as much as they are, because of the benefit to society as a whole of having well-educated citizens.) But as a student of economics, I can write with confidence that this is not how it works in any industry. In a competitive market, with many buyers and sellers, price will inevitably decline until it reaches the marginal cost of production–in this case, the cost to the photographer (having already purchased his or her equipment) of taking one more photograph. Thanks to digital technology, that cost is now effectively $0. The Met’s campaign, and all those like it, are only the beginning of this shift. Instead of lamenting the passing of the good old days, we photographers need to develop new business models that can sustain our creative art under radically different economic circumstances than those under which many of us grew up.
NOTE: All photographers whose images were used gave their permission to the Met and received credit; whether they received any sort of compensation is unknown to me at this time.
Click below to read the post and entire comment exchange:
What are your thoughts on the comment exchange listed above from the NY Times article?
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