{"id":18238,"date":"2013-11-03T23:47:30","date_gmt":"2013-11-04T04:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=18238"},"modified":"2017-02-03T18:31:42","modified_gmt":"2017-02-03T23:31:42","slug":"lucies-underground-with-diamonds-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2013\/11\/03\/lucies-underground-with-diamonds-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Lucies Underground, with Diamonds (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A.Photography\u00a0Community<\/del> User Group\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

If (as I argued in my previous post<\/a>) we don’t now have a “photo community,” and never have, you may ask, then what should we call the national, regional, and local cohort of photographers, picture editors, curators, critics, gallerists, collectors, and other related figures, past and present?<\/p>\n

I find myself drawn for this purpose to the neologism “user group,” as defined by\u00a0The Free Dictionary<\/a>: “An organization of users of a specific hardware or software product. Members share experiences and ideas to improve their understanding and use of a particular product. User groups are often responsible for influencing vendors to modify or enhance their products.”<\/p>\n

\"user<\/p>\n

A user group is more a collection of individuals than an organization, of course. Membership in a user group brings with it no expectation of solidarity with other users, activism in one or more common causes, or meeting face to face even once. It requires only a single shared interest, and includes no obligations to anyone else. Those of us in the photo world may not make up a true community, but we definitely qualify as a user group.<\/p>\n

So I’ll strive to break myself of the habit of referring to the “photo community” by substituting “photography user group,” or PUG for short. I encourage others to do the same, joining me in “burning all illusion tonight,” as Bob Marley sang. Canny of Lucie Awards<\/a> co-chair\u00a0Susan Baraz to evoke the feelgood image of community in her comments at last Sunday’s ceremony, but t’ain’t necessarily so.<\/p>\n

I Heart Lucies (but . . . )<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"LucieBaraz didn’t invent the myth of the “photo community”; she merely embellished this received notion by patting us all on the back for belonging to it and claiming the Lucies ceremony as its most important yearly gathering of the tribe.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of the Lucies. We’re in a field which still offers far too few such awards \u2015 insufficient public recognition, by their peers, of many notable individuals, organizations, and institutions, including senior figures whose long-term contributions too often still go unacknowledged and unsung. So I welcome any and all projects that enable us to pay our respects publicly to colleagues who have accomplished something noteworthy. And I don’t expect to agree with all (or even any) of the choices a panel or jury makes in the process of selecting recipients, though those certainly can range from the bold and long overdue to timid, pointless me-tooism.<\/p>\n

\"ICP

ICP Infinity Award<\/p><\/div>\n

With that said, the last time I attended, in 2006, I had the temerity to tell Hossein Farmani, founder of The Lucie Awards, that I considered it unseemly for him to take the stage and call the Lucies “the world’s most prestigious awards in photography” when the Lucies had only concluded their fourth edition and the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Awards<\/a> had been presented for decades. Never again got invited by them to attend as press, needless to say. (Not an unexpected outcome.)<\/p>\n

This self-hyping wasn’t new even then. On the eve of its sophomore outing in September 2004, the Lucies already described themselves thus in a press release<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Recognizing a void in the photography community, entrepreneur and philanthropist Hossein Farmani conceived and launched the First Annual Lucie Awards in 2003, to honor legendary and emerging photographers. The event is considered the highest and most prestigious ceremony of its kind and honors the greatest achievements in photography.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lucie

Lucie awards statue<\/p><\/div>\n

Since then, they’ve only compounded their presumptuousness. Encomia posted at their website range from\u00a0the hyperbolic \u2015 photographer Douglas Kirkland<\/a>, “This is the photographer’s Oscars” \u2015 to\u00a0the incomprehensible: photographer\u00a0Melvin Sokolsky<\/a>\u00a0states, “This makes the world of photography more important. . . .\u00a0The IPA is more than just an awards ceremony it is the much needed center for photography that is at the pulse of the photography world internationally. There is finally a museum for the history of the photographic image.” (Someone needs to tell Sokolsky that we have had dozens of photo\u00a0museums and centers worldwide for decades, and the Lucies don’t qualify as either of those.)<\/p>\n

The site’s “Quotes” page<\/a> also includes, without context or explanation, the following from\u00a0comedian\u00a0Fred Willard<\/a>, who hosted the first ceremony in 2003 and presumably delivered this as part of his patter: “This is the most important photographic event in history.” A comment likely delivered with tongue in cheek, made by someone who \u2015 if he was actually serious \u2015 demonstrably knows nothing about the history of the medium.<\/p>\n

Understandable that, like those who accept any honor in any field, Kirkland and Sokolsky, both\u00a0recipients of these awards, should sing the Lucies’ praises. Ditto for Willard, as a hired frontman. That doesn’t make their compromised opinions the consensus of the field. I doubt that a poll of professionals in those areas of photography touched on by the Lucies would rank them as photography’s top award. They’ve innovated nothing, just reinvented the wheel.<\/p>\n

Most recently, the Lucies have taken to circulating an unsourced quote about themselves<\/a>: “The Lucies are known as ‘the world\u2019s most esteemed photography awards ceremony.'” Known thus by whom?\u00a0This resembles nothing more than the posturing of the\u00a0obnoxious new kid on the block, strutting around while proclaiming himself king of the hill \u2015 the compulsive self-aggrandizing of the deeply insecure.<\/p>\n

\"Royal<\/p>\n

Fact is, the Lucies are a newbie in a field that, though not overcrowded with same, has some well-established awards. The ICP’s Infinity Awards, whose 30th annual ceremony will come in April 2014, isn’t the only important award around, nor even the oldest. Some categories of the\u00a0Royal Photographic Society Awards<\/a>\u00a0date back to 1878. The\u00a0awards program of the German Photographic Society\/Deutsche Gesellschaft f\u00fcr Photographie (DGPh)<\/a> began in 1959.<\/p>\n

The awards given by the\u00a0Rencontres d’Arles<\/a>\u00a0began with a book prize in 1970 and have since expanded to include additional award categories.\u00a0The\u00a0Hasselblad Awards<\/a> program began in 1980; they honor a single photographer each year, and include a whopping cash prize, circa $150K currently. (They also give out a more extensive series of annual grants.) The same holds true for the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Grants<\/a> (also founded in 1980).\u00a0Not to mention the more recent Prix Pictet<\/a>, among others. None of which, I might add, asserts itself as more important than any of its counterparts \u2015 a model of good manners that I commend to the Lucies.<\/p>\n

\"HasselbladPretending that these widely known and highly regarded predecessors don’t exist \u2015 or that, if they do, the Lucies have somehow outstripped them all \u2015 fools nobody but the na\u00efve, the gullible, and the uninformed. Moreover, it ill behooves Johnny-come-latelies to pretend to pioneering when they’ve so often merely parroted the prior endorsements of others. Nothing pathbreaking in that; it’s just anointing the already sanctified and basking in the reflected glory they’ve already attained.<\/p>\n

Herewith, in alphabetical order, a list of those who’ve received both the ICP Infinity Award and the Lucie Award, with the dates of those awards:<\/p>\n