Who shot the marlboro man?

[benkelley]

Here is a question about responsibility...

So I guess there was a little thing a while back, a video of Sam Abell responding to finding out about Richard Prince appropriating one of Abell's photographs for a Marlboro ad campaign. I saw the Prince show at the Guggenheim at the end of last year, and I had thought of trying to find out who took those photos for the Marlboro ad campaign, but before I had the chance I stumbled upon that video. Regarding Prince, I think the Marlboro works are the best, because of their social critique and the strength of the concept behind them, while I think that the rest of his work is mediocre at best. But that's an aside, and whatever one thinks of his work is immaterial to my question, which is this:

What about Abell's work? I mean, he is responsible for beautiful images organized to sell cigarettes to millions, to propagate an image, in the social sense, of the glamor of smoking. Now obviously he was either paid to shoot the campaign or paid for the use of already extant images, so his complicity is obvious. So where does that leave us with the photographs? What are we to think of them? How can we place them in an aesthetic context?

A parallel are Rodchenko's White Sea Canal photographs. As photography they are brilliant, really. Yet they were created in a slave labor camp where tens of thousands died, but there is no evidence of that reality, and in fact they promote a great engineering feat! (It actually was almost useless, and even Stalin remarked on how shallow the canal was when it opened). I can say one thing for Rodchenko, that he would likely have been shot in the purges if he hadn't done the White Sea Canal photo story. I doubt Abell would have suffered a similar fate if he had turned down Marlboro. Were there photographers who turned down lucrative cigarette ads?

I know that these aren't issues we often have to face in day-to-day photography (no plants or animals were harmed in making the picture of this tree), but I find them fascinating, and I wonder what everyone else's thoughts are.

Ben

p.s. a few white sea canal shots can be seen here:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=white sea canal rodchenko&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

 

[chippy]

Who shot the marlboro man?

hmm.. I thought he died of smoking related illness 😉😀



It can be a complex discussion ...or not

the same could be asked about the motion film photographers of the 50's ect. It wasnt an accident all the glamous movie stars had a cigerette in their hand. hardly there planing though. Nor all the tough guys or rebelious chachters in film of more recent years depicted with cigarettes or cigars.

Photographers would need a pretty strong workplace union to have any affect even if they wanted to, or if it was reasonable, that they are in any way responcable.

 

[mbisc]

I don't think you can compare the two scenarios -- one was a commercial ad campaign (not sure if Abell was a smoker or not) dealing with a product over which consumers had a choice, and the other one was glorifying the exploits of a brutal dictator, using slave labor that didn't have choices...

 

[kully]

Errr.. no, you can't compare the two.

I think that everyone is well aware of what badness smoking does to you, but so does drinking and the process to make cameras and film is killing the planet like any cigarette to a human body...

 

[Sam N]

a commercial ad campaign (not sure if Abell was a smoker or not) dealing with a product over which consumers had a choice

Exactly, the consumers have a choice. Even today, many people who know the health risks CHOOSE to smoke. I personally think smoking is terrible, but it's still legal and many people actually enjoy it and don't care about the health effects. The same could be said for a food photographer who makes junk food look delicious. It's up to consumers to make the right choices for them. Photography can be an extremely powerful medium, but how could we restrict Marlboro Man stuff without trying to control everything people do?

 

[Ducky]

Relying on memory, I think the Marlboro ad with the cowboy lounging in an open car was a rip-off of a scene in "Giant" with James Dean in the car in front of a large western ranch house.
As far as smoking advertisements, why are we (collectively) always rewriting history. Smoking used to be cool, now there are signs saying " no smoking within 50 feet of the mall entrance". Times change, deal with it, don't blame your father. And don't blame the smokers either, it was 'way cool' in those days.

 

[Spider67]

And strangely enough there was a Soviet cigraette brand "belomorkanal" = White Sea Canal.
The cigarettes were strange contraptions as the "filter" was an empty cardboard roll, that had to be squeeyed a bit before smoking and by some people who knew of the slave labour at that canal they made a political stament against the Soviet system by smoking them.

 

[Jacob]

I think it is an interesting question since I think everyone has a responsability for the output of ones work. Especially if You work in media, advertising etc. Yes, people can choose not to smoke, but it is hard to choose the images You meet in society.

When I was a kid, there was a billboard campaign with portraits of alcoholics with a text like "Anders, 24 years old", and the guy looked like he was 84! I still carry those images in my head and they might have made me rather careful when it comes to drinking.

What I mean is that our free choice is not that free, and photographers, copywriters and other commercial creators must realise they make an impact. I sometimes work as a fashion stylist I choose not to do work glorifying violence or of chauvinistic nature, which editors sometimes happen to ask for. Not that it is illegal, I just don't like to take part in making 16 year olds think criminals are cool.

I don't know what was common knowledge about smoking hazards when the Marlboro Men was shot. It might be less "dangerous" with images of handsome smokers today, when smoking has such a low status anyway?

 

[kxl]

Well, I shot the sheriff, but I didn't shoot no deputy.... 😎

 

[KenD]

History must be viewed at least in part in light of the prevailing world view at the time. Everyone smoked back then. Men were, well, Marlboro men!

 

[Bob Michaels]

Interesting parallel recently on NPR with interviews of the two voice over guys that do all the current political negative ads. It seems that neither of them have very strong political positions. They view doing those attack ads as "just their job" but love all the recent paid work they have been getting. You certainly cannot evaluate a messenger's ethics based on the message they are paid to deliver. (OK, within some limits of reason)

Will people criticize fashion photographers 40 years from now based on the almost anorexic requirements of current fashion models? The list of analogies is long.

 

[shimokita]

Maybe a slightly different viewpoint. For sure over the years there were different talent in the photo / CM campaigns. During the late 80s or early 90's (if memory serves me right) they did a series of commercials filmed in Thailand. A friend of mine was the talent for that shoot, and actually worked as the M-Man for a couple of years. I was impressed at the amount of time it took to do those short video ads. I visited him once in Bangkok (he was there for quite a few weeks). The hardest part for him was the continuous smoking as the guy actually did not smoke except when filming.

The job vanished when the TV ads stopped in the US market.

Casey

 

[colyn]

Honest officer I didn't shoot him!!!!! 😎

 

[paulfitz76]

having worked directly with the printing company that had many of the Marlboro billboards produced over the years, towards the end it worked like this: There were hundreds and hundreds of images shot, then scanned into photoshop by Capps Studios, who was owned by Leo Burnett at the time. Leo Burnett had the Phillip Morris contract. There were a large number of artists that composited all these images together to produce the final image. It might contain as many as a 100 different "parts". These were then output to a Fuji R print, which is a really had to reproduce with 4 color process CMYK, so much so that touch colors were added to bring the reds to correct levels. A sample billboard was then produced and posted in New Orleans on a trial billboard. Leo Burnett execs flew down to approved the final job.

A lot of this was moved to inkjet on vinyl, but they never really mastered the colors. Seems the people in charge at Phillip Morris had a real sense of color and imagery. They had to be able to "feel the leather" from the image.

In a sense, I think this was a real shame it was killed. Many people in this entire process lost jobs, and smoking has actually increased per capita in the US. There was even one hand painted image in Dallas for a while.

The last Marlboro campaign that I know of that was never released was called "Hand to Mouth", fittingly. I have a copy of the image from a test run. Many were given names, like "Train Stop", which was our test candidate.

Glory days I guess. I think they should show all the ad campaigns. I stayed at Palmer House in Chicago and was fascinated by all the large format portraits of stars the played in a famous club there. Commercial for sure, but really good work.

 

[benkelley]

Thanks everyone for all the responses... they've been very interesting. I figured there would be some good knowledge among forum members about this stuff, though unsurprisingly more from the Marlboro side of things. I did find the comment about the "belomorkanal" cigarettes interesting, too... I had never heard that.

Regarding the last comment–yeah all of those ads were really beautiful, and it doesn't surprise me the detail and care that went into them. And I find it interesting that everything fades intro aesthetics with time... Several years ago I saw a show about advertisements from the late 1800s, I think. I can't remember if they were only cigarette ads, but the drawings were really great. As an aside, I wonder if the southern, more familial nature of tobacco companies played into the care of, and feel for, the strength and color of the images.

I know, for example, that Rodchenko did a lot of work on the White Sea Canal photos. At least one was montaged to increase the number of observers, for example, and he was there for almost a year taking photographs. I think he had a role in laying out the whole issue of 'USSR in Construction' that it was in, too, and some of the layouts he did later on for the same magazine (if anyone has ever seen the one with the paratroopers), with foldouts and such, were pretty phenomenal.

Anyway my intention was never to compare the two... I think choice is a vital difference, and of course we need to consider actions within their societal context. But with time that context fades and these images become art, I wonder where that leaves all of these issues?

 

[benkelley]

Additionally, one thing that I wonder about comes out of the context of the Marlboro Sam Abell photograph. It relates to what Paul said, about the Marlboro campaigns being the work of many, many artists, both before and after just the photographer. Now when Abell was talking about Prince's appropriation of his image, he spoke of 'his photograph' being used in this art as appropriation context. Yet the idea of the appropriation was to highlight images related to smoking and masculinity. So not only was the Prince work about the totality of the ad campaign, and more than just the photograph, it was in itself a work of art as concept. So what about this photograph as concept? Does the conception of the shot matter, or just pressing the shutter? Beyond any rights to the image, where does the authorship required to take issue with this kind of appropriation lie?

I don't work as a photographer, so my thoughts on this are quite abstract, and I understand that rights are rather clearly defined, often contractually. Regardless, the opinion of both amateurs and professionals is more than welcome.

 

[Morca007]

An image is an image is an image, nothing more.

The image may change context and remain unchanged, it is the context that you are judging, not the image itself.

 

[benkelley]

Yet every image has a border or frame–a place where it ends. No image takes up the whole world, so every image is tied tight to context, and we all judge them in some way, consciously, subconsciously, or both, with that context in mind.