three days ago i moved most of my belongings out of “the Kibbutz’, my New York home for the last four years….certainly one of THE buildings in NYC among the photography crowd and a few other crowds as well….more than a few iconic photographers live there , along with some internationally known artists of all types..jazz musicians, sculptors, painters, the like…the Kibbutz is an ugly building…..but it has high ceilings and lots of light and a rooftop to die for…nobody doesn’t like the view from my rooftop…the East River takes a hard left northern turn going up right at the point where the Kibbutz sits near the Williamsburg Bridge…so this small piece of geography is a unique vantage point in New York where you can look all the way down to Wall Street and all the way up to Harlem…yup, the whole island up and down, all in one glance…
the view from my loft is a view that normally only millionaires have in New York…yet i pay little, for the Kibbutz is an unimproved artists loft… there are many writers here on BURN who well know that i live a spartan existence…it is too late in my professional life now for me to make “big money”…for whatever reasons (divorce did not help), i have done everything in my power to avoid ever having too much cash…yet, i have never been out of work…but, i have consistently rejected some commercial work in favor of “doing my own thing”…and, i have not regretted this lifetime decision for one second….i would rather have the pictures than the money…as simple as that…time spent in producing books does not reap financial rewards, nor does all of the personal shooting i do…whatever magazine assignments i have done (40 stories for Natgeo alone), and even the best ad jobs, have all pretty much been tailored in the long run to whatever personal project i was doing at the time…simply put, i worked for the magazines, the magazines worked for me…
well, you may be asking, if this Kibbutz is so damn cool and you love it, why in hell would you move out??? answer: as many of you know, i found an old historic beach cottage down on the Carolina shore that is just, well, just just ME…i had sold my small apartment in Washington which i had owned for 20 yrs….sold it before the financial crises and bought the little beach cottage after the crises…so i was lucky, not smart…so now i own, by luck, my dream house…with the smells and feel of where i grew up and started making my first photographs…the sea, the sea, and the sea…so so sustaining for me my whole life… this house will always need repair….and the old kitchen will probably stay the old kitchen…but the fireplace draws well in winter and the wrap around porch lets you sit outside anytime, and away from wind, because there is always a leeward side…most importantly, this house is very near my two sons, a fathers dream… it fronts a 40,000 acre state park…nobody can ever build in front of me or in back of me…water to left, water to the right, dunes straight ahead…nobody can see me standing on my front porch, even though a tourist area is not far away in reality..yup, t-shirt shops etc are somewhere out there over the dune line…but, never mind, i am in my own little world…as usual…
creating “my own world” has been my lifelong pursuit…as a kid i played in the dunes not far from here and made prints in my humble darkroom and dreamed of using my camera as a tool for exploration and expression…i refused to let anything interfere with that original dream…it was too powerful a dream to deny….
so, here i am right back where i started…with the same damn dream…it will not go away even if i wanted it to…so yes yes a lot of hard work blah blah blah, but i sure feel just plain old lucky…so lucky that i feel compelled to share with others what i think are the ways to get lucky….to make photography a life, not just a means of technical recording…hence BURN….as i sit in my mostly broken down beach cottage right now, it totally amazes me that i am right this second communicating with so many of you…you are “out there” somewhere just over the dune line…you are not just in my imagination, you are very real…
communicating online was never a dream per se..how could it have been??…that just happened…and after all it is just a part of what i do anyway…BURN is some kind of reflection of my personal life, so it is actually a personal project of sorts, only with your work instead of mine, but it is somehow my work too…so, we are in this together…BURN is just simply what goes on in my loft at the Kibbutz all the time…official workshops yes, but general hang spot for photographers more often than not…as i said, one of THE photo spots in New York…many of you have experienced this first hand at various photo projections and events …and more than a few of you have even slept on my floor (ode to Koudelka)…
ok, back to the point…all my stuff is now out of the Kibbutz…i simply cannot afford to stay there any longer because my primary expense is now the beach house (by the way, the beach place will soon become a place for you to visit…a bit of a trip, but worth it…and i plan to have some limited photo events here as well). anyway, i have just enough money to keep the Kibbutz loft through May…it now sits largely empty…and as i was pulling away from the Kibbutz three days ago, i thought “damn i just cannot let this place go…it is just too too perfect for a NYC space…”
so, the van was packed and it just hit me just as Mike and Tony Skater and i turned on to the highway….my thoughts raced to the obvious…so obvious…..
i thought: why not turn the Kibbutz loft into a BURN gallery for the photographers here??…sell your prints from selected work….
figure out some fair percentage for both of us (galleries usually have a 50/50 split) so that when Tom Hyde sells his tumbleweed photograph for $1000. he keeps half, and BURN keeps half (or whatever we work out)…to pay for the gallery, the office, and Anton, therefore financing BURN and YOU with an infrastructure we already have in place…sell your self published books too…BURN would not be an agency, but BURN could be your agent…there is a difference…and nobody has anything to lose that i can imagine…IF you sell a print, you help yourself, you help Burn…maybe help me to finance shooting some more families for my long term Off For a Family Drive…i mean, i wanna play too!!
i am soon to be looking for major subsidies for BURN…not advertising…i am talking major support to be able to finance photographers work…the EPF is only the beginning…taking large amounts of funding with minimal strings attached is of course the goal…impossible?? not really…we do it at Magnum with some regularity…
as of last week , i have been charged with helping to develop an online “channel system” for Magnum…Magnet….BURN will become a Magnum channel via Magnet…other Magnum photographers may or may not have their own channel…Magnet can develop its own funding as a larger “brand” and/or BURN can secure its own funding or both… or, perhaps we become a “column” or “channel” on other major sites as well…we are in uncharted waters…this will keep us viable here and help to keep you growing and producing out there just over the dune line…
i will be announcing soonest the new Advisory Board for BURN…an “A” listing of folks respected in our business and who will draw sponsorship and/or donations….i will be announcing soonest the entire list of staff from our audience here…up until last week, i had Anton Kusters and yours truly doing everything…Bob Black has volunteered, at my request, to be Editor at Large (seeking new talent, writing special essays, and well, just being Bob Black)…Kerry Payne has worked hours and hours on a viable business plan (she does that professionally), and Chris Bradley, Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather has volunteered his services outside of his agency, to study the whole “branding” bit…i am talking with several others of you who have expressed interest in helping us with BURN…you know who you are…
all of this sounds a bit daunting, but all of this will allow us to do exactly what we are doing only about 10 times better…right now we are “one dimensional”…i can see much more “depth” with each photographer whose work is presented on BURN….
i will not go into details of what we will do now, but believe me the possibilities are revolutionary…let’s face it, it is time for a revolution…throughout history whenever there has been confusion and floundering (which certainly describes our business/craft now) is exactly when something comes along and changes the “face” of everything…
the large publishing companies, with debilitating overheads, cannot move with stealth in this new economic environment…they have now to fire half their staffs…they have big buildings with big monthly expenses…at BURN we have my humble loft ….and we are in close touch with all of the same photographers that many magazines and agencies now cannot afford to hire…and they have to “over please” their readers so that they can attract a circulation which attracts advertising revenue….hmmmmm.…we could build, at a fraction of the cost, a better mousetrap…we have low overhead and a circulation that produces itself…
the audience is the action…
to point, we have YOU….the new breed…the new generation…the next bunch to rip it up…and WE are already gathered…we are not making stuff up here, i am telling you all of this already exists….hmmmmm, so put two and two together…timing, timing, and timing…and Chris Bradley’s concept of “co-opetition” is so true in the online community…we are not competing in the old fashioned sense of it….we will not take one dollar away from the established media companies…..we actually will help them…they will help us…funding is going to be shared by many….we just have to be in the game…
these are ideas anyone can have….so, why would it work for us?? because we already have totally in place a whole combination of things that nobody else has…but even if it does not work, what the hell?? nothing lost at all…forget one possible fear right off…my close attachment to all of you is germane to this whole issue….i ain’t going anywhere…and you know damn well i cannot get rich, because it would blow my whole image…survival sounds attractive however…
ok, well sorry, this was a way too long winded comment…but,i am in full thinking mode, so forgive please…and besides, the whole point of this is that i need your thoughts…but just on the ONE ISSUE, the gallery issue, for the moment…a BURN based gallery to sell your prints (curated shows…say, monthly events to do so)…i can hang 30-40 prints at a time…we can have print storage shelves etc etc…you provide the print or work out a deal with Mike to print for you (Mike has very long list of known photographers for whom he has been their primary gallery printer before he came to work with me)…
as with everything with BURN , we are a community with arbiter…just as in the submissions here for publication on BURN, the EPF (recipient to be announced at Look3) , etc etc. not everyone can participate in everything, but everyone sure as hell has a chance…do exemplary work , and you are “on it”…
again, just one more way to turn our online experience into a reality…
your thoughts???
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