Tom Simon has spent his whole life taking great photos for small pay. His problem with underpayment is refusing to understand the difference between art and commerce. I have told him, many times, that he is commercially challenged. He admits to this but. . . he can’t quite do too much to change the situation.
I sympathize with his predicament. People should pay more for artful work. The trouble is most businessmen can’t distinguish between artful and awful. It’s not their fault. Worse yet, their customers can’t tell, either. What’s the point of paying more for better work if neither you, nor your customers can tell the difference.
Let me illustrate.
A few years ago, I went with Tom on a mission to the Lehigh University, near Bethlehem, PA. Tom had been sent by his client, Penton Publishing, to take pictures of a certain research professor and the environs. Tom asked me to go along because he was never comfortable driving long distances. I was. I went on several long road trips with Tom because I enjoyed the traveling; Nashville, Dayton, Kansas City and some others. The trip to Lehigh was a trip of many hours, made longer by the snowstorm that lasted all the way home.
Tom worried all the way back that he hadn’t gotten his photos quite right. I said his client would probably be completely happy with them. Tom was not assured. We got back Friday evening. Tom’s photos were due Monday morning. I called him Monday evening to see if his client at Penton Publishing was happy with his work. Yes, they were. Then he told me he had driven back to Lehigh over the weekend and re-shot it all.
What? Why? He didn’t think the photos he had taken were up to his standards.
In the end, Penton chose the photos from the first shoot.
Commercially challenged. I rest my case.
Tom has an uncanny way of losing money by doing good work. Still, he does it for the most honorable of reasons – he’s willing to sacrifice personal remuneration for the satisfaction of work well done. Admirable, but not conducive to putting food on the table.
Tom’s photo work falls into three general divisions: Art; PR/News; and Documentation. By Art, I mean photos taken primarily for the satisfaction of capturing on film something worth looking at. Photographs, like all art, are judged by two qualities – aesthetics and content. Either, alone can make a photo significant. A photo, or any art that capture both, is best. Ansel Adams’ photos of the American southwest are great for mostly aesthetic reasons; composition and gray-scale values that range from nearly pure white to nearly pure black. There is a famous photo from the Spanish civil war that captures the ballistic impact of a bullet in the very instant of killing a soldier; action & death in a single photograph. Compelling because of content alone.
Tom has taken many photos that frame interesting content, aesthetically well.
Art rarely makes money, even though it should.
PR/News photos do make money. The PR (Public Relations) photos are typically grip-and-grin shots of politicians or business executives shaking hands with someone who is their moral superior; all done for borrowed glory. Picture a Mayor shaking hands with a young fellow who has just risked his life saving a puppy caught in rush-hour traffic. The photographed worthies pay for these self-serving photos. Newspapers, News, pay for photos that capture news-worthy notables, or events. These are similar to Paparazzi photos except that the subject matter is usually more important than a pop star. Tom has taken many of both PR/News categories.
Documentation usually consists of multiple photos taken to record notable events. Wedding photos are a slighter example, war photos, a greater example. Tom has done many documentaries. Sometimes he gets paid for his work, sometimes, not.
PR/News photos, and documentaries, can both be described as Photo Reportage.
I’ve used Tom’s photo work for all three categories.
When I was designing my wife Joyce’s poetry book, Ideas of their Own, I had the notion of coupling photo with poem in a way that allowed a sort of dialogue between poem and photo. The photos would not illustrate the poem, but would reflect something similar. An example of this is the photo that accompanies, Dust to Dust The dialogue is about eternity.
Dust to Dust
Buried
Under the leaves
And earthly debris
Lie the seeds
Of
Eternity
The growing tree has partially engulfed part of the tombstone. Then death took it too. The surrounding foliage will eventually overwhelm both stump and stone. Tree, tombstone, and poem are united in a correspondence of implicit meaning. All the photos I chose for the book have this interactive relation to the poems.
Joyce, as client, had final approval for all pics selected.
There were a lot to choose from. Tom has boxes upon boxes of them. They are alternately quirky, touching and outrageous. There is the hoochie coochie dancer that billed herself as a Stripper for Christ (she gave a large part of her earnings to the church). There is a series documenting the lonely life inside a mental institution, and another series documenting a modern day Klu Klux Klan gathering featuring an all-electric version of a burning cross. Taken together, they document the diffuse possibilities of human particularity.
Tom was assigned much of this photography, others, he assigned to himself.
Some, I assigned to him.
When I designed a cover for my son, Ian’s, band, BREAKER, Tom was my first choice.
Ian’s band was a Heavy Metal band. They already had a title: GET TOUGH. The cover had to reflect that ambient aggression. I thought of several possibilities, and settled on one – a photo of a Doberman Pincer - caught at point of full attack - in unnerving closeup. Who would take such an assignment but Tom Simon.
He said, “Sure”, and set off to make arrangements.
The Doberman’s handler suggested a long chain connecting the dog to a strong post with Tom and camera positioned at the extreme end. Once setup, the handler would shout, “Kill”, and Tom would snap the picture at the next to last second of the attack. It was a simple plan. What could possibly go wrong.
Astonishingly, nothing did go wrong. Tom got the shot.
Of course, Tom being Tom, he did it over several times. . . just to be sure.
An interesting point about the photos; The Doberman’s jaws are turned sideways. This seemed odd to me until I realized that he wouldn’t be able to tear out Tom’s throat unless he turned his jaws sideways. Isn’t that interesting?
The Doberman was unhappy with the shoot. He had accepted the command to kill, and had failed. No muttering excuses about chains and human trickery would change that.
Mupft!!! Ah well. Semper Fi.
A job well done.
I think Tom enjoys making documentaries more than any other form. He certainly has made many. Many self-assigned. Several years ago he traveled to the Lakota Sioux Reservation in South Dakota to cover the poverty, dilapidated housing, and generally run-down situation of reservation Indians. Calling them Native Americans doesn’t help them a bit. Replacing Tribal ownership of all property with individual ownership might. People, including Native Americans, tend to take better care of things they personally own. In any case, Tom focused mostly on the human and personal side of reservation life. Don’t know if this was a paying job, or not, but it was well done.
A few days ago, Tom emailed to me his latest project, full photo reportage of the local Hungarian Festival. Tom described it as, “a day with the Magyars and a few Austrians - a big sausage day”. Despite his casually indifferent description, Tom did his usual through job. He shot nine hundred frames, which he then edited down to the one hundred best. Also, as usual, he concentrated on the human element; happy exchanges, fun, food, and dancing.
The dancing shots were particularly good. Separated from the other photos, the dance shots could be considered, Art photos.
I hope he got paid.
Commercially challenged?
So what!
Ars gratis Artis - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer pretends to this slogan,
Tom lives it.
Hi. I’m Tom Simon. I’ve come to take your picture.
Correction: Tom tells me there was no chain on the attack dog. The Doberman attacked, and was stopped by voice command, alone. That’s even scarier; homicidal fury that can be started and stopped by command. Surely the dream every General dreams of the perfect soldier. The dog needed several minutes between takes to cool off.