Photographers are not Stealing Vendors’ Art
Sunday, July 3rd, 2011
With growing frequency the vendors at Salamanca Market in Tasmania come out swinging when you point a camera in their direction. “No photos, no photos” yelled the Eastern European lady last month selling wood-framed mirrors. This weekend one vendor darted over and accused me of being sneaky because I made a hip-level street photograph of her porcelein fat lady yoga sculptures. Apparently *original artwork* [to be discussed later].
Part 1 – A Xenophobic Fear of all Market Customers
The market vendors fear that their ideas will be stolen. Their fear is that technology enables easy duplication of their work. The enabling technology is the camera… a tool found in every person’s pocket traversing the market. The bigger the camera, the higher the assumption that the photographer is an idea thief with a link to cheap Chinese manufacturing and a desire to open a market stall in direct competition. Don’t laugh, this is exactly why (as I heard from a family friend this weekend) Eumundi Markets in Queensland have signs that inform no photography permitted of the vendors artwork.
Let’s backstep a little… they struggle to sell an art/craft product at a community market and I, the photographer, am supposed to (a) want to replicate their product, (b) have the ability and advantage to replicate it below their production cost, (c) envision enough profits to warrant that effort, and (d) ultimately come out of the deal with a fast profit. Seriously, that’s a business version of Alice in Wonderland where the Break-Even-Point on my investment is measured by how full the sugar bowl gets compared to the length of my coat-tail.
The fact is that with declining profits at Salamanca Market year on year and with a Hobart Council looking at ways of saving it’s sorry arse from disappearing… yes, it’s that bad partly because of the high ratio of Chinese made hats and tshirts… there is NO MONEY to be made by copying a vendor’s product. The best one could hope for is to recreate the same product and each person make half as much money. Does that make any sense?
And let’s go right back to the beginning – identify the people who the community markets want to attract? Tourists. Repeat local traffic. If you can’t see how photography fits in then I can’t wait until you suggest cutting the tongues out of market patrons to stop them talking about your work. Has it occurred to anybody that a real thief who saw that business model would just BUY YOUR PRODUCT and replicate it?
