Microphone for Thomas Zehlich Curator and Collection Curator Photo Museum Winter Tour.
Good evening.
Is it working?
Yeah, now it's working.
I must say I'm really stuck by this video footage.
And it's hard to change now, but I try.
Tonight I had the feeling that there's one word which is not really existing, which is competition.
I think you all are facing now a new situation where things are getting smaller, budgets are getting smaller,
opportunities are not raising but will be smaller, but it's not actually a new situation for photography.
And I think if you're looking at Nisaphonieps and Talbot, they had a race.
They were fighting for being the first, for being the better.
And I think this is also something which continues through the whole history of photography,
that there's always a kind of being better, being new, saying something which is actually standing in its time.
And I think in every time over the 170 years there's always a time where a photograph actually matches towards society,
towards other things in this period of the time.
I just want to focus on the last 50 years to look a bit closer.
And what I want to say is actually that there are changing key players or there are changing key markets for the photographers.
If I'm looking, for example, to the 60s and 70s, I would say every photographer tries to get into a magazine.
Lots of print run. You have a great art director who supports your work, who makes wonderful spreads and things like this.
So this was the market. You had an idea where you want to go.
If you're looking to the 80s and 90s, I would say this was a time where photography was entering the museum.
First the museum, then the gallery, first being convinced by the institutions and then the market actually followed.
And around the year 2000, I for the first time discovered something that there's a kind of fetishization of the photo book.
And the photo book in a time actually where everything was sorted out in a different manner.
I mean, there was Amazon coming up, there were other distributors who were actually taking over all this kind of organizing the market.
That means the control for photographers and also the control from publishers and in the back of those, the financiers of these publications,
which are today mainly museums, for example, that means there's a big shift actually going on since about 10 years,
that the market is not actually increasing for the photo books. The players are actually getting smaller.
On the other hand, you have this fetish of the book, which is fired by publications of Badger and Parr and all these things,
which are leading actually to the situation that there's a kind of run up for books which are just on the market.
And three weeks later, you won't get a copy because everybody creating a market.
That means there's also a kind of ridiculous situation now that actually it's not gaining to getting a bigger audience.
I mean, actually the audiences are getting smaller.
The last trend I have figured out is actually if you're going to Paris-Fertault, if you're looking at this kind of site fairs,
you go to Off-Print and you see this run on small publications. Print run 100 edition, very low,
maybe distributed through a circle of friends, or friends-friends.
And maybe like two months ago, I was talking to Willem Popier and he told me,
well, I think I know almost everybody who bought my book.
So there's something happening.
And if I'm looking from an outsider to the Dutch scene,
I just must say that an audience like this tonight is for me completely astonishing for documentary photography.
That means there's an audience, there's an interest in the thing.
And in one way, I say, okay, we can complain about money.
And I think there was one Twitter about this while we all talk about money here.
I think you are doing a great job in creating this scene.
I mean, you have so many players here, active players, photographers, curators, publishers.
You all are doing something for this documentary photography.
I have no idea how this will look in the future, how things will happen.
Maybe these are the shocking images which we have seen.
Maybe we are not authors anymore.
And I think Eric Kessels has curated that show for our last year from here on.
There was a manifesto that actually everybody is an author. That's what he said.
That means everything will change.
The authorship will change.
And I think also the way how things are financed.
For the museum, I can say so far we are very glad that you're doing such a great job.
We have some of you in our collection.
We are very happy about this.
And so in the end, I can just say go on with that.
And if I would be a doctor, I would have to say the patient has a little cold.
But I would say otherwise you are doing very well.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Sandy.
