I cannot tell you how often I have discussed photo agents with photographers over the last forty years. Suffice to say that I now have my responses to any questions pretty well formulated. The first deals with the biggest misconception most photographers have; that agents get you work.

Let’s get this clear. Photography is a business. You can call yourself an artist or your work art if you want to hang it on a wall, publish it in a book or try to sell prints but if you want to get commissioned you are going to have to understand compromise, problem solving and delivering to a client what they will pay for.

Agents understand this but they also understand that in its most cynical form a photographer is a product. A product that they can promote to a client, but to spend time doing that they need to know that the photographer is already an in- demand product. To gain agent representation the photographer needs to demonstrate both financial and creative success before a conversation will begin.

An agent will take over your pre-production chores, budgeting requirements and billing for your existing clients and expect a cut. They will help you grow your success by pitching you to new potential clients they have relationships with and expect a cut. But they will not take on an unsuccessful photographer and make them successful.

In a sense this is a good thing. Agent representation is not cheap. They will expect you to pay for bikes and couriers to get your portfolio seen. They will expect you to produce a portfolio to their liking. They may ask you to contribute to agency marketing costs. And don’t forget that you will be paying for the office running costs, client entertainment and staff salaries.

That can burn through money pretty quickly when you have nothing coming in.

You might feel at this stage that I am against agent representation. I’m not, I used to have an agent myself twenty years ago. However, there are far fewer photographers who should have and need representation than those who think they would like or should have representation. This is primarily in my experience because they misunderstand the photographer/agent relationship. Agents don’t work for photographers as is commonly believed by photographers, they work for the client. The client is paying the bills. They are representing the photographer.

In this case the photographer becomes a subcontractor just like any other freelance creative who plays a role in the completion of the commission.

I often hear photographers stating on social media how they set the rules for payment from their clients. How they expect up-front deposits and immediate payment. This may work for weddings, high street portraiture or event photography but it does not and will not work with editorial or advertising commissions.

Agents understand this as does any experienced professional commissioned photographer. The rules are clear and similar to how they have been for many years. I say similar because the rules of engagement have become increasingly stacked against the photographer with three-way- pitching and increasing demands on pre-production planning falling on the photographers shoulders.

Professional photography is a business and part of an industry. Agents are part of that industry, they are not a charity and they don’t work for free. They are there to make a photographer successful if in return that success helps them. They are not a training school, job centre or a photography academy. To think so is to be naive about the realities of how they work.

Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Under-Graduate and Post-Graduate Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and the author of At Home With the Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006), Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019) and What Does Photography Mean to You? (Bluecoat 2020). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com and he is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.

Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, (Orphans Publishing), is on pre-sale now.

© Grant Scott 2024