This the image of photographers in the New Age.
It started quite some time ago, actually, but not all of us were looking. Not only have photographers lost their status as professionals, itself possibly a trick that lasted from, say, the late 50s until the end of the century - more or less - but that pendulum has swung right the other way, and as breed, we have become kinda suspect. I don’t think we actually turned into better or worse people, but the entertainment industry and the hysterics of some crazed extreme feminists turned the image of the photographer into that of predator. Gone that era of industry glory/glamour we once were able to enjoy, if we took up the right branches of the business, and then throw in a few “me too” kind of people with their actions against leading photographers, and hey presto, without - to my knowledge at least - any of those snappers ever having been taken to court and found guilty of anything, magazines took the opportunity to appear cleaner than clean, toss some of their erstwhile stars under the first bus, and save money at a time when circulation was plummeting. I suppose it was a convenient way to end million dollar contracts the titles were finding a bit heavy to bear in the new digital economy. Of course, guilty or not, reputations were toast.
All that aside, you have to remember that the title photographer is pretty broad, and everybody with a camera or just a cellphone is now seen as in the same box. The Internet has apparently made access to porn of every sort very easy, and so it’s not a difficult step for everybody with a lens to be tarred with the same brush.
I used to earn my keep photographing girls, and whether or not the market died, I think I would no longer do it, if simply to avoid being taken to the cleaners. I have, on the rare occasion, been asked by women (civilians) to photograph them in the past five years or so, but I refuse. Frankly, I’m of an age where I simply don’t want hassle in my life - my friggin’ health causes quite enough, thank you.
