It was bound to happen 04.03.2009
So I knew it was coming, but it actually arrived in record time (like less than 24 hours):
“So, who gets the money for the use of so many messengers’ images compiled in a book? Do the proceeds benefit the BMEF or a particular BMA? Will Boston, this year’s NACCC host city or any other future NAC3 host city [sic] recieve royalties?
Looks good despite my lack of current Flash software, but I just had to ask.
Corey the Courier”
For the record, Blurb (the POD printer), charges $29.95 for a softback book. I am asking $29.95 for softback. Which is a markup of $0 dollars. Meaning I am making nothing off the book and am trying to keep the price down to what I think is both accessible and affordable for most people. My wife and I talked about it. At a bar. I think it was the right decision. She tends to be on point about these things.
The hardback is $59.95. I make $15 off that. If you think my time, effort and expense is worth it, and you can afford it, you can buy one of those. That money goes to offset the costs of having bought the camera’s, and the lights and the schooling to use them.
For me this all brings up the larger and continuing issue of: why in fringe communities (punk, messenger, activist, etc) is it not just that its not acceptable for creatives to profit off their work, but that it’s actually forbidden for them to even attempt to break even. That making things must be a public sacrifice. That we should keep stabbing ourselves in the face and through our rejection of the “capitlist” or “corporate” or “square” world we not profit or sustain outselves by being good at something. That the kind of labor I do isn’t labor, but exploitation of the subject.
After all, all I did was take the picture. (Yeah, I’ve read Susan Sontag)
susan sontag
Look. It’s pretty simple. I make photographs. And the best photographs I make are of people. That’s my thing. That’s what I’m good at doing. Some people can build tables. Some people design buildings. Some people can take a whalebone and scrimshaw the shit out of it. I can’t do any of those things. All I really know how to do is make photographs, and the only photographs I think are worth a damn are ones of people. Specifically the ones I take of people. My ego is that big. I’m just that good.
And it’s actually the only thing I know how to do in order to make a living. I haven’t bartended or barbacked in over ten years. I don’t say that like that’s a good thing. I can’t get a bartending or barback job in this city. I can’t get a job waiting tables. I haven’t had retail experience since the ’90′s.
Sure, this makes me part of a fortunate class. I make a living doing something I like. Except that for whatever godforsaken reason I grew up in the mid-90′s and actually took all that Punk Planet/MRR/RiotGrrl/Zine Revolution shit seriously. So I have the drive to make things and the 90′s DIY punk guilt of profiting off the things I make. It’s the classic conundrum that made Jawbreaker and Dan Sinker “sellouts”. Because they, like me, realized to some degree or another that after a while, this stuff is all you know how to do. And the rent is due on the 1st just like it is for everyone else.
So I took photos of people at a party for a bike race that I spent months helping to throw. And then I spent a few hundred dollars to do a show of the photos. And I gave a bunch of them to a magaizne I love. A really awesome guy bought one to give his girlfriend for Valentines day. I thought that was really sweet. On paper that purchase put a tiny dent in what it cost me to print the show, but actually it bought my wife and my groceries that week. And now, I want to collect these photos, which after a almost decade long career as a photographer I think are some of the strongest work I’ve done, into a book. And I want to sell it to people, because I don’t have the money to just make it and give it away.
And the question, the same question I’ve been running into for the last fifteen years of my life, is “how dare you spend your time, your talent, your effort, you money making something and then ask people who want it to pay for it. How dare you create the perception that your skills have value. How dare you make something for anything other that charitable or altruistic motivations. How dare you exploit the people you make photographs of. You sellout. You rip-off artist.”
“You should have learned to make tables.”
See? Now I’m member of Metallica. I’m Lars Ulrch and am pissed at Napster. Now I’m Rod Blagoavitch, and all I can think is “but I did the Chrome Aces, which raises money for the Bicycle Messenger Emergency Fund. And I didn’t work for a month to help throw the NACCC, so people could come and have a good time. And I’m helping to organize the bid for Chicago’s shot at hosting the CMWC in 2011. And I contribute to COG. And I donated photos to a silent auction last weekend to help raise money for WestTown bikes. Look at all these good things I did!”
And here I am, at 2 in the morning, blogging about my post 90′s Gen-X punk guilt on not totally hating what I do because Corey the Courier called me out. I have a hot-ass wife one room away curled up in bed, and this dude is keeping me up rehasing things I thought I had figured out a decade ago.
I mean, what. the. fuck.
Oh, and Corey? I remember you from the NACCC. If I recall you needed a place to stay and kept e-mailing me about it off the NACCC Myspace page, but kept saying that you couldn’t check your e-mail. It was annoying. But I’m pretty sure in the end we found you somewhere to crash.
Hope you had a good time while you were here. Buddy.
