This post is a continuation of a conversation started at LOOKBetween. The introductory post can be viewed here: http://luceoimages.com/2010/06/legal-left-meet-creative-right-lookbetween-1/
Collective, Cooperative, Agency, or Freelance? No doubt there’s a number of other models available to choose from –after all, the boundaries of business are only constrained by the practical limits of making an idea into reality. That said, these four approaches tend to be the predominate models available to young, working photographers in the year 2010. I’m not about to say that collectives and cooperatives are new models, but I do believe that their resurgence has something to do with the perfect storm bearing down on the photo industry at the moment. As editorial budgets dwindle and companies reduce their advertising spending in order to thread the recession needle, photographers feel the pinch.
My own preference for working inside of a cooperative model has a lot to do with the nature of the alternatives. Freelance offers the most control over your own destiny, but is also the slowest to grow. Collectives, in my opinion, are a little too loose in structure. It’s nice to group photographers on a common website, but without a method for accountability, a plan for growth, a set of common goals, and a solid division of labor, the benefit of exposure is a short-lived one. Agency also comes with a distinct set of challenges. Photographers stand to gain a certain amount of short-term benefit from the rolodex of a good agent, but ultimately give up long-term control and payoff. Double digit commissions and lack of control or ownership in the company that manages the photographer’s livelihood make this a difficult proposition to bite off. This is further complicated by the fact that much of what an agent provides to the photographer –invoicing, deal-making, marketing, and a regular point of contact –have been greatly diminished by reliable accounting software, cell phones, sat phones, online portfolios, client list services, email marketing, and, generally, by the leveling nature of the internet.
2010 is a lot different than 1970. No longer are photographers tied to a costly analogue system of couriers, proof-prints, and a central, staffed office to move their pictures and find assignments. As the years have ticked on, much of this overhead has been streamlined by the simple fact that the price of communication has fallen and its availability is almost universal. Photographers are no longer roving lone-wolves, but rather people who are as plugged in and as available in Iceland as anyone in Manhattan.
When the industry had surplus, photographers had little reason to explore models beyond the traditional agency and freelance structures. Income is income and when you’re doing well, there’s very little incentive to look for alternatives. No need to fix something that’s not broke, right? Given the challenges faced by photographers working in the middle of this economic squall, however, I am not surprised by the upsurge in new collectives. To me, even if it’s not overtly stated, collections of photographers showcasing work together vaults a very basic business hurdle: reaching the broadest market possible with the least amount of expense.
One of the most productive things that LUCEO did early on was to have serious, ideological conversations about the long-term direction and goals for the organization. I believe this is the central feature that really helped us out of the collective trap and into a model where we are all able to work together towards attainable, common goals. I also believe this is the Y in the road that separates collectives from cooperatives and the reason that our organization has shunned the former descriptor. It’s near impossible to cooperate on anything when everyone involved has divergent goals. With the right infrastructure in place, however, we’re able to move from point A to point B as a group.
In the spirit of openness, here’s a short list of steps that has helped us streamline our own organization over the last couple of years. It’s not exhaustive and there’s no right or wrong answer. Rather, what we have found is that these points are organizational milemarkers to help guide the formation of new groups.
1. Ideology Counts.
When you’re employed by someone, you generally walk into a setting where the core mission of your employer has been spelled out. When you’re forming an organization, there’s a lot of room to assume that people have common goals when, in fact, they don’t. During our first week of in-person meetings, these ideological conversations dominated our schedule. Everything from figuring out a name to defining our common purpose. These conversations, difficult and lengthy, helped us to build a common foundation of things that we all agree on. Finding this common ground has helped LUCEO keep the steering wheel on course.
2. Divide Labor Equally
As a group, one of the things that I am most proud of is that we know each others’ strengths and weaknesses and divide tasks along those lines. By letting people take charge of things that they are good at, we are able to move projects forward with a degree of efficiency that any one of us, individually, would not be able to accomplish.
3. Accountability
This is part of building any team. For us, having common goals keeps us accountable to one another. Having point-people in charge of managing specific tasks is absolutely critical when it comes to completing a project. If nobody is accountable, nothing gets done. If labor is equally divided and everyone feels that they’re getting a fair workload, the trade-off is obvious. LUCEO’s management and accountability structure is something that we worked to implement early on and addresses the very specific challenges faced by our organization. This is definitely not a one-size-fits-all approach, so I’ll spare the intricacies of our system. In short, having discussions that address this very practical issue turned out to be a very important step for LUCEO.
4. Set Goals
We set two different kinds of goals: short-term, attainable ones and long-term, ideological goals. Every six months, we reevaluate our progress towards the short-term goals, check our ideological compasses against our long-term ones, and decide on what tasks will come next. Goals are an important part of measuring progress and absolutely critical when it comes to keeping our attitudes in check. Without a sense of accomplishment, it’s difficult to keep in the game.
5. Evaluate and Reevaluate
Lastly, it’s important to evaluate successes and failures and to make adjustments based on these honest evaluations. The very first order of business at our annual and midterm meetings, is to use our goals as a metric for what worked and what didn’t. The bottom line is to be sure that the things that work continue, and to make changes to things that need improvement.
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Matt Slaby is a Colorado-based attorney (and photographer). Matt attended the University of Denver College of Law on a full public interest scholarship. His experiences in law school include a PILG clerkship for ongoing civil work with El Centro Humanitario’s legal clinic as well as handling wage claims and contract issues for DU’s Civil Litigation Clinic. He is a founding member of Luceo and, in addition to his photography, brings his legal background to the organization. Questions, comments, and ideas for future posts are welcome. Please add them to the comments section or reach me here: mattslaby@luceoimages.com
**DISCLAIMER: Luceo Images LLC and Matt Slaby assume no liability for the information provided above. This information may not be correct when applied to your specific situation. Moreover, the information provided is not intended to create an attorney/client relationship and shall not be construed as legal advice.
matt
June 29th, 2010, 11:27 am #
there are some gems in this post and i appreciate that you have chosen to make your model available to the public. i have to question your breakdown of a collective as a group of individuals with different goals.. this is a pretty unfounded analysis of the collective model and i’d suggest that a collective is defined by the familiar and complimentary vision of its members, not a variety of ideals.
what seems to set the luceo roadmap apart from the collective path is a focus on shared capital and investment – there is a very respectable monetary backbone to your organization (as well as ideological) while the backbone of other collectives is entirely ideological.
when and where were the negative connotations to the collective label born? – for some reason it is implied that a collective is a rowdy and unstructured organization. because collectives are doomed to fail because they stray from a fiscal focus and rely mostly on shared ambition. for this reason, photography organizations scramble to find other labels so they aren’t pigeonholed.
Can we be the MJR Team? The MJR Group?
Matt Slaby
July 6th, 2010, 2:34 pm #
Hey Matt,
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I didn’t intend to paint an entirely bleak portrait of collectives. We, obviously, have our roots in that structure and, like the writeup says, the basic utility of showcasing work in a common area takes a huge step towards helping the collective’s individual photographers reach a broader audience (and market).
The post wasn’t directed at MJR (or any other specific collectives); rather it’s a pretty basic writeup of a few available models, my own personal opinions about the problems our industry currently faces, and the longevity and sustainability of each model. Collectives have been around for a long time independent of photographers. Personally, I’ve been involved with three photo collectives in various stages of formation over the last few years as well as other collectives with no connection to photography. My experience has been that there are certain, very basic challenges that are endemic to the collective model.
My argument is that these challenges can be overcome by putting a structure in place that provides for accountability, helps develop a common ideology and set of goals, divides up labor in an equitable fashion, has internal rules and voting procedures that don’t hamstring the organization by being unnecessarily clunky or slow, and offers the ability to openly evaluate successes and failures. I think that, when an organization arrives at that point, it becomes a cooperative by definition.
At any rate, I don’t think that analysis is unfounded or negative. It’s about as intellectually honest as I can be about this process and information that I hope will help other people navigate some of the challenges that we’ve worked so hard to answer.
-MS