The self-defeat of precarity
Welcome to the 103rd edition of this newsletter!
There are not going to be any links to smart articles in the following. If you're looking for these, you can stop reading right now and simply wait for the next email.
What I want to do instead is to think out loud in writing. You might know this from real-life situations: the act of thinking out loud -- the act of saying things where you don't know if they make sense or not, but you have that gut feeling that the saying them will yield insight. You can do the same when you write. I don't necessarily want to explain how this works, because that's a different topic.
There are a number of artist friends in far-away places whom I haven't seen in years. Occasionally, they -- or I -- might say something along the lines of "I miss seeing you". Or they might ask "When are you coming to visit?". I never have the courage to say "I would love to take a trip to visit you. But I don't have the money to do that."
If there is one theme we rather do not talk about, it's financial precarity (or its lack thereof). By that I mean the collection of individuals who think of themselves as artists (if you're not a photographer or artist, please don't feel excluded; it's just that in the following I want to get at something specific)
For example, we'd like to think that William Enggleston, a very wealthy individual, got into MoMA in the mid-1970s simply because he was a great photographer. We'd also like to think that Vivian Maier, who worked as a nanny, died in obscurity because it was her choice not to share her photographs with the world.
Of course, things aren't quite as simple, because there also is the issue of gender. John Szarkowsky loved photography done with machismo, meaning most of the work he pushed was done by men.
But let's stick with money here. Does anyone really think William Eggleston got to where he got had he been an impoverished Southerner?
What I want to talk about here, though, is not so much how wealth facilitates success, at least in terms of providing a very basic foundation from which to operate.
Because the reality is that based on what I have observed, it's fair to say that most of us are not wealthy, and many of us are struggling with some form of precarity.
The other day, I spoke with a photographer friend. Sitting in his apartment, he was wearing a coat and hat. When I asked he told me he needed to keep the heating bills down. This struck a chord with me.
As I'm typing this, I'm wearing two pairs of socks, and my upper body is layered in a number of t-shirts and what I would love to think of as a shirt (it really is a light coat to be worn outside).
But I don't want to write about precarity itself, either. Instead, I want to write about how we treat it, both individually and collectively.
I don't know if you have ever had this experience. Every once in a while, I will confess to someone that I don't have the money for something. And then I see a short pang of happiness on my interlocutor's face, and they will say that they don't have the money, either.
What always strikes me in these moments is how we both have felt that we can't really admit something. It's almost as if there is the idea in the community that we operate in that while you can expose your innermost fears or terrors in your work -- the more, the better! (in art-school crits, this is the equivalent of catnip: the critics will start rolling around on the floor, given they're so happy and high) -- the one thing we must never admit is that we lack money.
This is a very self-defeating aspect of the community we operate in. It's self-defeating on a collective level (I could go into this, maybe I'll do this another time). And it's very, very self-defeating on a personal level.
I obviously can't and won't project what I have been experiencing onto others. So take all of this simply as my own musings. Maybe all of you are lucky enough not to cripple yourself with doubt and depression over your own precarity and how that precarity gets in the way of you making work that you feel you need to make.
What this comes down to that it's not so much the precarity that's defeating (even as it might be, at least to some extent). But the way we treat it ourselves is, whether on the collective level (where we simply don't talk about money and the fact that the system is so vastly stacked against the majority of artists) or on the personal level (where we turn our own precarity into a defeat, into something that reflects on who and what we are).
I wish that I now could tell you how to solve this problem. Alas, I can't. I don't know. But just this morning, it occurred to me that the very first step ought to contain the acknowledgement that as a community we have this problem, and many of us have it as individuals as well.
And then, and only then, can we go about finding solutions that we all can contribute to. Alternatively, we could hope for better governments. Or we could hope for an art world that's not dominated by the interests of wealthy people. At this stage, I doubt whether I will live to see either one of the latter two developments. So we might as well start with something that we all can contribute to.
This is a big ask, but it will have to start with new ways of exhibiting photographs -- away from commercial galleries and museums.
It will have to start with accepting other ways of showing pictures than precious, overly carefully produced prints.
It will have to start with stopping to think that we, as photographers, somehow are engaged in something more valuable than all those "amateurs" that take pictures.
It will have to start with more collectives where photographers get together and share resources, knowledge, and support.
These ideas are not independent from each other. One might involve another. Consider the case of Poland's Sputnik collective: they have an exhibition space, and they produce books. Or take Japan's Totem Pole Photo Gallery.
I'm sure these collectives aren't without problems. But for sure, pooled resources carry its members a lot farther than what a single photographer can who is not independently wealthy.
Most importantly, though, I feel that we should be more open with each other. Instead of treating our precarity as something we need to be ashamed of, something that we can't possibly discuss, we should stop doing that and see how we're all in the same boat.
Sometimes, someone will send me an email that praises me for expressing something in public that everybody thinks but nobody wants to say. I'm grateful for those emails.
But they also make me sad. Why does this need for someone willing to say something even exist? Why are there so many secrets?
Why do we feel the need to subject ourselves to a system that doesn't work for us and that makes us miserable -- when instead we could set out to work on something better?
Anyway, I told you that I was going to think out loud. Maybe something clicked for you. Maybe not. But I thought I'd put the above out into the world.
As always thank you for reading!
-- Jörg