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You know you are famous when you are the answer to a Jeopardy question; when everybody knows your name, your phone never seems to stop ringing and your work is on display everywhere in galleries and private collections and when you have reached out and touched enough people with your unique artistic sensibilities that they keep coming back for more (that might explain the always ringing telephone). Yes remember, you are a famous photographer. In ways, you are just as much a celebrity as the stars you photographed; often, not in the frame, nor the focus of the image, the centre of attention, or craving the attention, but still warranting some of the glory. Wow, how did you get that shot? That is why you are one of the famous photographers. Understandably, photography has become its own artistic genre and its practitioners are artists. Famous photographers—there are so many to choose from and so many to admire. Some, perhaps, never get famous beyond their region, though many are internationally renowned. Some are famous for the genre of work they specialize in—like, that lady who takes all those pictures of babies and makes posters, postcards, t-shirts, etc…. (Anne Geddes) now, she is a brand. Some are famous for certain photographs, (Yousuf Karsh snapped that stern WWII portrait of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa). That is how you build a reputation, a style and a body of work that hopefully, one day people will come and see in a museum or art gallery exhibition. Sports. Politics. Arts. Crime. War. Science. Fashion. Most any category you can think of has a plethora of famous photographers associated with it. Unlike people who are famous and try their hand at photography, famous photographers are well-known and revered for their talent, subject matter, risk-taking adventures, experiments, failures, methods, techniques, specialty, genre, uniqueness among peers…. too many other qualities to list. Some professional photographers are better known for the magazine that publishes their pictures, e.g., Rolling Stone, Playboy, or National Geographic. Their reputation is staked upon the quality of the work, as well as the content of the image. Ever wonder if—nah, there has got to be a team of staffers working with photographers these days: grip guys handling the lights, a scout procuring shooting locations and /or studio space, an expert taking care of make-up and wardrobe, another expert wrangling animals and props, some beefy man handling security, and there is also the agent, the manager, the publicist… imagine having to do all that by yourself—some photographers did! Heck, they probably even developed their own pictures—nowadays, it is a gaggle of Photoshop enthusiasts “fixing’ it in post,”—cropping, color correcting, airbrushing, adding effects, doing collages—some wonderful pictures just do not happen by aiming and clicking the camera’s shutter button alone. With the digitalization of photography and the increasing ubiquity of cell phone cameras, what does the future hold for photographers? Still maybe just that one shot, the shot seen around the world. And then one day, Alex Trebek will mention your name in a quiz show clue. Though nothing lasts forever, except maybe a good picture, we know some of the best and best-loved pictures were taken by famous photographers.
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