Incredible street photography documentary needs help.

bulevardi said:
It all depends on how you look at it.

First of all you don't know how he took these photos, the same way he takes his other street photos like in the video. You still don't know if these people liked to be photographed, or if they were prepared for these pictures which are taken spontaneous or rather abrupt/unexpected. On these pictures, you can't see their reactions 2 seconds later.

It's good that he takes pictures of bad things in life like poverty.
Ok, this poverty gets better known in the newspapers by his work, but he's not helping building new houses.
In contrary, he's getting paid for these pictures, he's getting rich by their poverty.
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Did you actually watch Bruce Gilden's photo series on Haiti earthquake victims? Or, his series on foreclosure victims in Detroit? If so, and you still question his motivations and concern about the people, it is not possible to respond.

And if you believe Bruce Gilden is getting rich from photographing their poverty, no response is justified.
 
I really liked the 4 or 5 clips that were posted online and were sad there wasn't more. I'm happy to learn that I can fix that!

:)
 
Bob Michaels said:
Did you actually watch Bruce Gilden's photo series on Haiti earthquake victims? Or, his series on foreclosure victims in Detroit? If so, and you still question his motivations and concern about the people, it is not possible to respond.

And if you believe Bruce Gilden is getting rich from photographing their poverty, no response is justified.
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Yes I watched these pictures.

First of all he's a Magnum photographer.
To be part of the Magnum cooperative, you have to be good in your job. Bruce Gilden takes good photos, I don't discuss that.

Let's take it serious: Magnum sells pictures to the press, museums, publishing, advertising, television, everywhere around the world.
Magnum earns a lot of money this way, and as far as I know, like any company, they pay their employees (in this case: the photographers).

You don't have to be smart to know that when Magnums is one of the 'elite', they pay their photographers the same way.

But you think that Bruce Gilden takes his photos for free? You think that Magnum doesn't pay anything for his documentaries or essays? Get real.

He does photography for a living, he gets paid to shoot. Wether it's poverty or other topics.
 
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bulevardi said:
Yes I watched these pictures.

First of all he's a Magnum photographer.
To be part of the Magnum cooperative, you have to be good in your job. Bruce Gilden takes good photos, I don't discuss that.

Let's take it serious: Magnum sells pictures to the press, museums, publishing, advertising, television, everywhere around the world.
Magnum earns a lot of money this way, and as far as I know, like any company, they pay their employees (in this case: the photographers).

You don't have to be smart to know that when Magnums is one of the 'elite', they pay their photographers the same way.

But you think that Bruce Gilden takes his photos for free? You think that Magnum doesn't pay anything for his documentaries or essays? Get real.

He does photography for a living, he gets paid to shoot. Wether it's poverty or other topics.
Click to expand...

My understanding is that Magnum does not pay it photographers. It represents them in the sale of their photos. In other words, if the photos do not sell, the photographer receives nothing.

So yes, I do think Bruce Gilden takes these documentary photos for free. Knowing what I know about the economics of this kind of documentary photography, there simply is very little, if any, money in it these days.

Bruce Gilden pays the bills doing commercial photography. That is all my friend who once was his assistant did with him.
 
Bob Michaels said:
My understanding is that Magnum does not pay it photographers. It represents them in the sale of their photos. In other words, if the photos do not sell, the photographer receives nothing.
Click to expand...

Members of Magnum pay 50% of their earnings to Magnum. Or, to look at it another way, the photographer gets 50% of the fee that Magnum charges for use of the photo. The large majority of Magnum photographers make very little money.
 
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