... The Antonym of Amateur

[Sparrow]

Amateur ... from Latin amator ‘lover,’

... so its antonym should really be something like misanthrope ... from Greek misein ‘to hate’ + anthrōpos ‘man.’

... when I was growing up when yorkshire cricketers were amateurs and called gentlemen so as not to confuse them with the paid players and athletes and rugby players represented their countries for love and a vest or cap ... when and how did Professional a become the more desirable

 

[sevo]

There used to be a time when every lady you called a "professional" would have smacked you... 🙂

But different semantics of "professional" aside, there really has been some point in time and culture at which having to work for your money turned from a sign of failure into something respectable...

 

[pete hogan]

The "when" may have been the banning of Austrian skier Karl Schranz from the Winter Olympics in 1972 by Avery Brundage, IOC.

 

[Michael Markey]

There used to be a time when every lady you called a "professional" would have smacked you... 🙂

But different semantics of "professional" aside, there really has been some point in time and culture at which having to work for your money turned from a sign of failure into something respectable...

In English society being paid was always considered to be slightly disreputable and probably still is in some parts .

The term "trade" was always seen as a put down.

I have heard it applied in such a way myself.

However it was considered to be the done thing to serve in some public capacity for the greater good.

 

[Out to Lunch]

Re. the 'greater good'. Well to do Americans have copied the notion: I once received the business card of a wealthy American and he listed his profession as: 'philanthropist'.

 

[lynnb]

my guess is, when the word professional became code for "highly trained"+"consistently high quality"

 

[Sparrow]

my guess is, when the word professional became code for "highly trained"+"consistently high quality"

... so which came first the pro-camera or the pro-photographer?

 

[willie_901]

It turns about developing a steady income from photography requires much more than skill and talent as a photographer. It requires a significant amount of effort in marketing, networking and basic business skills such as developing a business plan, record keeping, legal compliance (contract, taxes) and customer service.

A B+ photographer with A+ business skills could be more successful comercially than the opposite scenario.

 

[lynnb]

... so which came first the pro-camera or the pro-photographer?

Neither. The marketing dept always comes first.

 

[gb hill]

... so which came first the pro-camera or the pro-photographer?

That's easy...photographer. It's the big corporations with their marketing schemes, especially now-a-days, that has duped the masses into thinking they need a "PRO" anything. or the latest...🙂

 

[Dwig]

... so which came first the pro-camera or the pro-photographer?

While there were true professional photographers long (read: over a century) before the common use of "pro-camera" or "pro-photographer", these two terms began to spread through the common literature in the mid to late 1960s though earlier occurrences probably exist. It seems the marketing label (e.g. pro-camera, ...) came first an its usage downgraded the term "amateur" to being a replacement for "tyro", which seems to have vanished from the pages of the camera magazines by the early '60s.

In the early to mid 1950s the old term "tyro" was sill seen with some frequency. The "tyro" of the '50s is the "amateur" of the '60s and today. In the '50s, the "professional" was the hack who just did it for a buck, some skilled and some not. The '50s "amateurs" were the skilled artisans who did it for the love of the craft/art.

 

[Roger Hicks]

While there were true professional photographers long (read: over a century) before the common use of "pro-camera" or "pro-photographer", these two terms began to spread through the common literature in the mid to late 1960s though earlier occurrences probably exist. It seems the marketing label (e.g. pro-camera, ...) came first an its usage downgraded the term "amateur" to being a replacement for "tyro", which seems to have vanished from the pages of the camera magazines by the early '60s.

In the early to mid 1950s the old term "tyro" was sill seen with some frequency. The "tyro" of the '50s is the "amateur" of the '60s and today. In the '50s, the "professional" was the hack who just did it for a buck, some skilled and some not. The '50s "amateurs" were the skilled artisans who did it for the love of the craft/art.

Highlight: Hardly. Many who made a living out of it -- sometimes a good living -- have throughout history been about as far from "the hack who just did it for a buck" as is possible to imagine. Roger Fenton? Alfred Horsley-Hinton? Brassai? Cartier-Bresson? Ansel Adams? Ronis? The list goes on and on and on.

Cheers,

R.

 

[rhl-oregon]

Back to the antonym: consider "careerist," which like 'amateur' isn't confined to photography or any particular discipline, but has clear connotations about pursuing money and reputation above other considerations. Self-marketing, in other words. (But probably then the relevant negative antonym for 'careerist' would be the equally sneering 'dilettante.'

Lynn's note about 'highly trained/consistent quality'--whether the training & quality come from a committed academic/studio approach or from the older apprentice/journeyman process of approaching mastery--makes it hard for me to treat the term 'professional' as necessarily inferior to the idealized amateur. Consider as examples within RFF Chris Crawford and (to the best of my anecdotal knowledge) Dan Wagner. (I 'm sure you can think of others here.) Both highly trained though perhaps differently credentialed, both committed to upholding high quality, both making as much of a living from their craft and skill as possible.

 

[Ranchu]

Professional 'becoming' more desirable than lover is on account of the reproduction of daily capitalism, most likely.

"The everyday practical activity of tribesmen reproduces, or perpetuates, a tribe. This reproduction is not merely physical, but social as well. Through their daily activities the tribesmen do not merely reproduce a group of human beings; they reproduce a tribe, namely a particular social form within which this group of human beings performs specific activities in a specific manner. The specific activities of the tribesmen are not the outcome of "natural" characteristics of the men who perform them, the way the production of honey is an outcome of the "nature" of a bee. The daily life enacted and perpetuated by the tribesman is a specific social response to particular material and historical conditions.

The everyday activity of slaves reproduces slavery. Through their daily activities, slaves do not merely reproduce themselves and their masters physically; they also reproduce the instruments with which the master represses them, and their own habits of submission to the master's authority. To men who live in a slave society, the master-slave relation seems like a natural and eternal relation. However, men are not born masters or slaves. Slavery is a specific social form, and men submit to it only in very particular material and historical conditions.

The practical everyday activity of wage-workers reproduces wage labor and capital. Through their daily activities, "modern" men, like tribesmen and slaves, reproduce the inhabitants, the social relations and the ideas of their society; they reproduce the social form of daily life. Like the tribe and the slave system, the capitalist system is neither the natural nor the final form of human society; like the earlier social forms, capitalism is a specific response to material and historical conditions."

http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/perlman/sp001702/repro.html

 

[Sparrow]

Highlight: Hardly. Many who made a living out of it -- sometimes a good living -- have throughout history been about as far from "the hack who just did it for a buck" as is possible to imagine. Roger Fenton? Alfred Horsley-Hinton? Brassai? Cartier-Bresson? Ansel Adams? Ronis? The list goes on and on and on.

Cheers,

R.

... did any of them really style themselves as Professional Photographer? ... (style themselves; in the way of a honorific, awarded to or claimed by an individual in a personal capacity)

 

[Roger Hicks]

I would seriously doubt it, at least in the USA (can't speak for Europe), where professional photographers are usually considered commercial photographers, even journalists are not considered professional photographers in the vernacular, although of course anyone who pays taxes on income earned taking photos is a pro.

Well, yes, this is the point. It reveals that "professional" can mean all kinds of things, especially when you are trying to sell "professional cameras". Yes, the "professional"/"commercial" divide exists in Europe too (and elsewhere) -- but ultimately it comes back to "good photographers" and "bad photographers". As I've said before, I call myself a "paid amateur".

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

... did any of them really style themselves as Professional Photographer? ... (style themselves; in the way of a honorific, awarded to or claimed by an individual in a personal capacity)

That's an honorific? Many would regard it as an insult. But if you earn a living from it, you'd be hard put to deny that you're a professional. At least to the tax man.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Sparrow]

That's an honorific? Many would regard it as an insult. But if you earn a living from it, you'd be hard put to deny that you're a professional. At least to the tax man.

Cheers,

R.

I was trying (and possibly failing) to avoid making a value statement with the nomenclature ... the terms are used in pejorative and appreciative by turns (one could try prosumer on the tax man I suppose?)

 

[Dektol Dan]

Here We go Again

Here We go Again

Self esteem is waning with the moon on the olde rangefinder forum.

A 'professional' photographer shoots grade school classes, high school graduation portraits, and weddings.

 

[Kwesi]

Amateur ... from Latin amator ‘lover,’

... so its antonym should really be something like misanthrope ... from Greek misein ‘to hate’ + anthrōpos ‘man.’

... when I was growing up when yorkshire cricketers were amateurs and called gentlemen so as not to confuse them with the paid players and athletes and rugby players represented their countries for love and a vest or cap ... when and how did Professional a become the more desirable

Can't speak for Yorkshire cricketers, but I will attempt to speak for the average American sentiment in 2014. Being labeled a professional means some one's society is willing to pay you for what you produce- be that an opinion, an image or the results of a surgical procedure.
This business of the pursuits of the amateur who can afford leisure being somehow more noble is really nothing more than romanticized BS.