Larry Towell seems to be the perfect candidate for a kickstarter project. As a highly regarded photographer with a track record of producing excellent work and well crafted books it would be a no-brainer for one of his legions of fans to advance him $250 for signed copies of two of his books or $350 for a limited edition 4.5×5 Mennonite print or $500 for an 8 x 10 from the current Afghanistan project or $1000 for an 11 x 14 plus a copy of the book with your name listed as a sponsor.
But, Larry’s a little off-the-back on cultivating his online audience. Currently and traditionally, the book publishers, galleries and magazines hold all the names, addresses, phone numbers and emails for the people who love his work and want to know when he does something new. The new way of doing business is that you keep those lists and collect those names by setting up a blog, facebook, twitter and email subscription accounts. That way your fans can find out when you’ve got something exciting cooking like this. Larry does have a facebook account (here) with 845 people on it and who knows how many are true fans but following the 1000 true fans rule, he would only need them to each pledge $12 to reach his $12,000 goal.
I think this is the business model for these types of projects because as Larry says “since the traditional venues for funding photojournalism have disappeared, I am appealing to you for help.” And, we only need to look to fellow Magnum photographer Alec Soth who is the gold standard for alerting your audience to your activities with his old blog and new Little Brown Mushroom Blog where books he publishes for sale are quickly sold out.
[I swear this is my last kickstarter post… these things come in 3’s]
8 Comments
Love the new business model for artist. I just donated 10 bucks!!
Is kickstarter jumping the shark? Please discuss…
Russians left over 6 million land mines in this country and people are still getting injured/killed by them?? Pricks…
Gee, i wonder where the hatred for (western) foreigners comes from.
Anyway, i found the part at the end interesting where he says his books will be part of the debate about this war. With so many war photographers out there, i wonder how much pull he thinks he has from his work? Sounds very egoistic in some ways.
Would like to support him in his cause, nonetheless.
Useful information, thanks for sharing.
If this guy is looking for funding, photography must be hard.
I think it’s beeen mentioned before that stories like these are not being subsidized or paid for by organizations, or they are few and far between, at least from what I have seen in the last year.
I think kickstarter is the new avenue for funding projects, how it will evolve is anyones guess I imagine. I think there is a great story to tell about the war torn countries. How any story/book will impact debates about war or wars wont be seen for a couple of decades.JMHO
When a Magnum photographer has to put hat in hand to fund a project you know times are damn hard for photographers of all stripe. If this is the new mode then I worry about our collective future as image makers. What chance do others without the marque of Magnum and the intrinsic talent therein have in fund raising for personal projects? I hope, no pray, kickstarter is successful in their efforts. If they are not, the voice and vision of photographers without substantial trust funds may become silent.
[…] heated debate spilling over into the Kickstarter comments, some observations from A Photo Editor here and a critique of the concept of crowd funding from Daniel Cuthbert that involved an interesting […]
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