Giving it Away

[Try this argument on some other professionals you may know -- people who simply love being lawyers, for example -- and see how far you get asking them to contribute their work product free and with depressing regularity with every new auction or fundraiser.]

This view also conveniently avoids the hard fact that virtually all artists either are freelances whose income is never assured, or who have to support their art by teaching, waiting tables, or in our case, shooting weddings.

And all of us have the same bills that everyone else has.

Then there is the hardy perennial argument that contributing to a charitable event will be "great publicity for you." Oh really? When was the last time you saw an artist's name at an event like this printed in anything but tiny type in an auction catalog or on an equally small label on a wall?

Great publicity? For the sponsoring organization perhaps, or for the charity. But never for the artist.

I experience variations on this theme every so often with my photographs and/or my words. During this past summer, for example, I got an e-mail from an art consulting firm in Manhattan asking permission to reprint a column I had written about a particular photographer in a glitzy catalog that the firm was preparing to accompany an exhibition of the photographer's work at a law firm in midtown Manhattan.

"Of course we would give you credit," the e-mail said.

Leaving aside that it would have been difficult to reprint my column without giving me credit, I informed the art consultants that I would be happy to oblige, once they paid a $500 reproduction fee -- a standard practice for writers like myself, who retain copyright to their work after it appears online or in print.

No dice, came the reply. My request for payment "actually does not fit in with our budget for this show."

Oh my oh my. Just for the hell of it I told these folks that they certainly were not going to be able to come up with any article as succinct yet all-encompassing as mine, or that included such good original quotes from the photographer.

"It goes without saying that the law firm can afford it," I went on. "Your firm, I surmise, simply does not want to pay my totally reasonable repro fee out of the money allocated to you for the show. That's your prerogative.

"My prerogative is to tell you this is a mistake..."