max s. gerber(the latest shot)

i’ve known tim for more than twenty years. we were in jr. high school and high school together and have remained friends. tim now lives in rio de janeiro, with his wife, dada, a neonatologist. he doesn’t make it back to the states more than once or twice a year, and now that he has an 18 month old daughter it’s even more rare that i see him.

i met up with them at the farmer’s market (3rd and fairfax) last night, and i have to say, it sure seems tiring having a toddler. i’m not a parent, not just yet. i’m probably nowhere near being one, but the prospect has been considered, and most of the time it’s considered it’s a prospect i actually feel positively about. but . . . it sure seems like hard work. it’s like you have an extremely fragile pet whose only natural impulse is to run full speed ahead into potential danger at the slightest opportunity, and if you turn away for just a moment you’re screwed. it amazes me that all my friends who have more than one kid have made the decision to have a second kid at the very moment when it seems their first kid was the most high-maintenance and out of control. that’s quite a leap of faith.

i remember talking to archibald shortly after his second child was born and he told me “man, i can take care of one kid with my eyes closed. two is hell.” i can imagine.

still, having a kid and having a family seems like an integral and important part of human experience. i’ve certainly always looked foward to the idea despite the obvious difficulties. but now there’s been a lot of talk regarding a post thomas broening made about taking a conference call from an art buyer while at the park with his kids, and how this might have lost him the job. and this led to an art buyer (heather morton) chiming in, though she mostly talked about motherhood. is it different if you’re a mother rather than a father? are clients more willing to accept that you might have a life as a human being outside of or aside from photography? seems unfair.

from this there has been a lot of talk about mining your family to fuel your personal work. i believe this is a good thing, though some of the talk indicates that clients either don’t care or don’t like it. the recent trend of over-retouched faux-cinematic looking pictures leads me to believe that clients don’t really want any of this. they don’t want to see messy, atmospheric, potentially blurry images of real people engaged in meaningful (if uncelebrated) lives. they want crisp, overlit, retouched-to-hell, spotless advertising, posing as editorial.

it’s enough, as one comment on aphotoeditor.com recently said, to give me hives. really, it’s difficult enough already trying to make a living as a photographer. are we supposed to not have families on top of it all? life is full of choices, i know. thankfully i haven’t found myself in this particular predicament just yet.