Article calls out nepotism in contemporary photography

logan2z

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Not really industry ‘news’ but about the industry.

Apologies if anyone is offended by the profanity in the title of the article.

Seriously Photography, What the Fuck Are We Doing?

Today, or at least slightly before I started writing this, I received an email from one of the world's most significant biennial photography festivals, which awards a substantial financial prize. There are two awards, in fact. One is a general photography award to develop a new project, and the othe
americansuburbx.com
 

koraks

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Vague allegations combined with a moral superiority complex makes for a toxic mix.

It is worth noting again that this is the only juror on the team who works in the commercial sector.
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The horror, someone works in The Commercial Sector (however the heck that may be scoped!) Making this a problem per se says a lot about the author, and nothing whatsoever about the juror or the social system they're part of.
I think that jurors with commercial interests should be excluded from the jury process in the future.
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Hey, wake up bud, we all have 'commercial interests', all the time. We gotta make rent, you know.
Also, we all have conflicting, overlapping, intersecting and otherwise interacting interests all the time. It's called 'life'.

I have a feeling that this person might be projecting their own ethical struggles onto society at large. Maybe Brad should keep things a little closer to home.
 
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logan2z

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To be fair, I don’t think the author was referring to generic commercial interests. In this case, he was talking about a photobook publisher who was a juror in a photobook competition which ended up awarding prizes to two artists in the publisher’s stable.
 

koraks

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Of course, I understand it is a commercial interest in the same domain. That doesn't make it inherently filthy as the author seems to assume as a matter of fact.
 
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logan2z

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koraks said:
Of course, I understand it is a commercial interest in the same domain. That doesn't make it inherently filthy as the author seems to assume as a matter of fact.
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No, but it’s not a great look and could have easily been avoided if either the competition would have not put a book publisher onto the jury for a book competition, or if the juror had recused himself when he saw that two entrants in the competition were in his stable of artists.

Why unnecessarily raise the specter of nepotism that could potentially cast a shadow over the competition?
 

Pieter12

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Nepotism has always been a factor in the arts. Galleries and museums today generally won't even look at work unless it is by or has been referred by someone they know or represent. Even in the commercial world, assignments go to artists (illustrators, photographers, musicians) who have worked with the client/agency/director before. I remember feeling tremendous guilty once for not casting a relative in a commercial. She was quite talented, but did not fit with the rest of the cast but I did feel bad about not giving her the part.

I also recall an associate assigning a job to a photographer he used a lot even though the image could have been easily found at a stock agency for a fraction of the price. In that case, the favor might have been returned by the photgrapher shooting for less than his usual fee when the budget was tight. Or it could be because the photographer was a friend and/or took this person out to lunch or dinner a lot.

Back to the article, there always seems to be a group of artists who are trending and win a lot of grants, shows and awards, seemingly locking out newcomers.
 

lecarp

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That was a slow boat to nowhere! And after such a titillating and/or provocative title!
 

MattKing

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't "nepotism" mean favouring a relative, not favouring someone who you have a business in?
Personally, I'm usually okay with a potential conflict of interest of one member on a multi-member jury, if that potential conflict is declared.
And how do we know that the publisher didn't recuse themselves from any consideration of the successful entrants?
 
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logan2z

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MattKing said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't "nepotism" mean favouring a relative, not favouring someone who you have a business in?
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According to Oxford:

the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives, friends, or associates, especially by giving them jobs.
 

MattKing

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I've always used it for relatives only - interesting.
 
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logan2z

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Pieter12 said:
Back to the article, there always seems to be a group of artists who are trending and win a lot of grants, shows and awards, seemingly locking out newcomers.
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I’m coming to realize how insular the arts community really is.
 

koraks

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logan2z said:
Why unnecessarily raise the specter of nepotism that could potentially cast a shadow over the competition?
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Why start by discerning evil motives? What ever happened to the notion of "innocent unless proven otherwise"? Is it so hard to imagine that someone who deals with a potential conflict of interest as both the maturity and the ability to deal with this in a constructive manner? Is the only way to deal with this responsibly to just throw in the towel beforehand, because "oh, people might think and they might talk about it!"

I understand what you say, but as far as I'm concerned, the mode of default suspicion is much more of a cancer worthwhile trying to root out in the arts world (and other scenes) than this issue of nepotism. And in both cases, part of the cure is not the kind if vague hand-waving and whining & complaining done in the linked article, but entering a constructive dialog that invites transparency.

MattKing said:
Personally, I'm usually okay with a potential conflict of interest of one member on a multi-member jury, if that potential conflict is declared.
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Declared and somehow responsibly dealt with. Merely pointing it out is a start, but the purpose of doing to is to trigger a mitigation plan to cope with the situation. Which in the end will allow a jury to use also the potentially useful/valuable perspective of someone who would be excluded otherwise.

And also, is this the domain in which we're worrying about nepotism? Holy cow, sounds like we need to fix our priorities damn fast.
 

Arthurwg

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The author's other writings often display a sense of bitterness, dissatisfaction, personal frustration and disappointment.
 

Truzi

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MattKing said:
I've always used it for relatives only - interesting.
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I use it in the broader sense, but, considering it's roots, shouldn't it only apply to nephews? lol.
 

joho

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Since 2008, an Epicenter for Art & Photography.​

where did we hear this before.
 

F4U

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I actually scrolled through that link, but was quickly given to consider it bilge water.
 

Alan Edward Klein

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It's definitely a conflict of interest. They would have been better off picking a retail bookseller as a judge rather than a publisher that publishes a couple of the entrant's photos books. €,40000 is a lot of money and very tempting I read a lot of these photo contests, there's a lot of finagling going on.
 
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