From Avedon to paparazzi

Here I offer a series of lectures under an encompassing title “From Avedon to paparazzi“ on the subject of a multi-faceted intercourse between photography and richly illustrated magazines.

While preparing material for my students I supplemented my own experience with specific examples I was told by people I’ve spent some time with like fashion and advertising photographers Barry Lategan at his studio in London & Guy Burdin at the French Vogue; reportage photographers Josef Koudelka and Marc Riboud at Magnum in Paris; a portrait photographer Bill Brandt in his home near Holland Park and numerous Picture Editors, Art Designers, Editors-in-chief like Beatrix Miller of the British Vogue or Managing Directors like sir John Tusa of the BBC World Service.

Firstly, in my lectures, I talked about the various ways editorial offices are set up.

To make it simple I divided them into Four representative groups using well known names as examples:

• Condê Nast Publications (in-house photographers plus famous photographers for special projects)
• National Geographic (resident and free-lance photographers)
• The Independent (mixture of images from agencies, their own libraries & staff photographers
• Hello Magazine (paparazzi, agency photographers and commissioned photographers)
• Additionally, the critical input from the legendary designer, Alexey Brodovitch (Harper’s Bazaar).

Subsequently I clarified what these descriptions mean in real terms:

• Photographers
• Staff photographers
• Free-lance photographers
• Agency photographers
• Paparazzi
• Photojournalists
• Stock of images
• Internal library (copyrights owned by a magazine)
• Agency (various sources)