Condé Nast CEO Chuck Townsend told staff at the publishing company last week that its magazine business is doing well despite the recession, and ends 2010 with 3,000 more ad pages than its competitors. Townsend announced the success in his year-end memo to staff, according to MediaWeek.
Photographers who shoot for Condé Nast publications–those who don’t have lucrative contracts with the publisher, that is—know that the company hasn’t shared these economic windfalls with its contributors. Their day rates are low, their contracts demand extensive re-use of images and they don’t want to pay extra for additional content created for their iPad editions. But photographers aren’t the only ones who sacrifice payment in exchange for the exposure they hope to get from having their names in the pages of Vogue, Glamour, Architectural Digest or Conde Nast Traveler. Fashion models help Condé Nast by working for far less than they could make in non-editorial work.
Buried among the documents filed in the lawsuit brought against the modeling agency Next by three of its former models is an earnings statement that shows how little Vogue and Vogue Paris pays fashion models – and how long they take to pay.
Models Anna Jagodzinska, Anna Cywinska and Karmen Pedaru allege that Next stole earnings from them and, since they left the agency in April, has failed to pay them money they were owed by clients with outstanding bills. As evidence, lawyer filed Jagodzinska’s account statement at Next, dated April 23, 2010.
One of Richard Avedon’s fashion photographs fetched nearly $1.2 million at auction on Saturday, a record for the photographer. The image, of the model Dovima with a pair of elephants at a Paris circus, was one of 65 Avedon works sold at Christie’s in Paris in an auction to raise money for The Avedon Foundation.
The auction also included a four-portrait portfolio of images of the Beatles ($609,547); a triptych of Andy Warhol and some of his associates ($412,301); a portrait of Marilyn Monroe ($231,491); and a racy image of model Stephanie Seymour ($362,989).
Along with other fashion images, prints of photographs from Avedon’s “In the American West” were also sold, as were portraits of Malcolm X, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Becket, Natasssja Kinski, and a young Lew Alcindor, who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
The auction earned a total of $7,495,600, selling 100 percent of the lots at prices that met or exceeded estimates.
The Avedon Foundation was established after Richard Avedon died in 2004. The foundation encourages the study and appreciation of Avedon’s work through exhibitions, education, publishing and other activities.
The ad sales and newsstand success of a September issue is so important to a fashion magazine’s bottom line that media watchers and the fashion press were breathlessly reporting who would be featured on the covers of the big fashion issues back in July.
Last week the Audit Circulations Rapid Report announced which fashion magazines scored well in single copy sales; the results were reported by Women’s Wear Daily Memo Pad.
Harper’s Bazaar, featuring a Mark Seliger photo of actress Jennifer Aniston, had its best-selling issue in seven years, with 255,000 copies sold on the newsstand. Vogue, which showed actress Halle Berry photographed by Mario Testino, sold 5.5 percent fewer copies than it did in September 2009. Berry is only the second woman of color to appear on Vogue‘s fall-fashion issue. (The first was Naomi Campbell, who appeared on the September 1989 issue.)
The September issue of W, the first redesigned issue since editor-in-chief Stefano Tonchi was hired this spring to reposition the struggling magazine, sold only 30,000 copies on the newsstand; that’s a 14 percent decline over its September 2009 issue. W‘s gatefold cover featured eight young actresses including Kat Dennings, Jessica Chastain and Greta Gerwig (We know what you’re thinking: Who?) wearing all-black outfits. They were photographed against a gray background by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.
More insights into Tonchi’s planning for W‘s September will be available on the W Web site tonight. “Fashion on Film,” the magazine’s online online festival of fashion-related videos, will kick off with a ten-minute mini documentary called “The Remaking of W.” According to Women’s Wear Daily, the documentary, shot mostly in the W offices, includes an interview with Tonchi in which he discusses his plans to refocus the magazine on style and culture.
It should be noted that cover photos alone don’t sell issues. It’s possible more people wanted to read “937 New Looks” in Bazaar than wanted to read “726 Pages of Sumptuous Fall Fashion At Every Price” in Vogue. (A question for Tonchi: Are you getting pressured to put more numerals on the cover?)
The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers, destroyed wildlife, did untold harm to the Gulf coast ecosystem and brought economic hardship to communities dependant on the fishing and tourism industries.
And as Steven Meisel points out in a new fashion story in Vogue Italia, the oil spill is also super-duper yucky.
We've all, no doubt, had an unpaid internship (or two) in our lives and while they can be a rewarding experience, there are some people out there who seek to take advantage of the lowly struggling intern.
Consider the case of Sophia, a photo intern who says she was humiliated by "a fashion and beauty photographer" in downtown Manhattan who she identifies only as "A."
Among the abuses Sophia cites in the short video below are getting repeatedly called "Alex" by the photographer, and being forced to tickle a model's feet to generate a "happy" expression.
Ok, we've heard worse horror stories than this but it did get us wondering who this photographer is. Anyone want to hazard a guess in the comments on the identity of "A"?
In the Sixties and Seventies, fashion and portrait photographer Brian Duffy chronicled the heyday of Swinging London. In 1962, The Sunday Times referred to Duffy and his fellow London photographers David Bailey and Terence Donovan as "the terrible trio." For clients including Vogue, Elle and The Times of London, Duffy photographed some of the most famous faces of the era, from The Beatles to Jean Shrimpton to David Bowie to Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
But for many years, Duffy was more legendary in the photography world as the guy who tried to destroy his entire archive by setting his negatives on fire. In a BBC documentary produced last year, Duffy said he set the fire after one of his assistants told him the studio was out of toilet paper.
Our obituary of Duffy, who died May 31, is on PDNOnline.
Ok, this is from that super-cheesy Cheezburger network but worth a look on a Friday. The blog is called "Ridiculous Poses" and it features photos of models in…wait for it…ridiculous poses.
