Why is Eugene Richards' name missing from the list of VII photographers?

yup, as well as two or three others, there was a post about this a while back but the jist was that they all felt that they were bringing in stories and being proactive but that VII was not paying what they should or giving them the assignments they should.

I don’t see any other names missing from the list.

for a about two weeks there where two other guys as well, one might have been ed kashi but I don’t remember. this happened about 3 weeks ago maybe more.

you two aren’t making any sense.

VII unfortunately has been in a downward spiral for a while. The more established, older photographers are semi-retired and living on past laurels from wars gone by. Don’t misread this as they’ve done fantastic work- it’s just that they’re more likely to do vanity pieces these days than head back to a war. Retirement is well deserved. Now the agency is dependent on less established photographers to go to Iraq and elsewhere. The agency lives on a reputation from five years ago.

VII remains a formidable force in photojournalism. Any notion that it is a has-been institution is flat wrong. All the photographers they have are powerful and many rely on assignments that cover a wide range. The recent piece by James Nachtwey in the National Geographic about Iraq war rehab, for example, was hardly a “vanity” piece.

I have no idea why Eugene Richards no longer is in the group. I do seem to recall that he once was in Magnum, then pulled out. So he may just have a difficult time with organizations, as do many highly talented creative artists. But I am not going to speculate further.

Maybe if the company had been formed back in the early 1990s it would have been considered a formidable force during that period. Again, they did some good work back in the day- and up until around 2003- but if you look at the photographers who are out there doing serious work in major publications right now, you’ll realize none of them are with VII.

except Chris Morris – I cover DC politics quite a bit, and his work is brilliant.

Just want to second what Neal has said above.

Dan,

Your comments hardly warrant a reply, but here we go:

VII photographers not doing serious work for major publications? What are you reading?
If National Geographic, TIME, NYT, et cetera are not major publications, I don’t know what are. And if Nachtwey’s and Richards’ photos of US soldiers wounded in Iraq, or Ladefoged’s images of Iraqi refugees in Syria, Knight’s photos from Darfur (the list could go on and on), are not serious work, I do not know what is.

No to mention Lauren Greenfield, probably the most successful of them of all, albeit working on slightly different kind of subjects from the rest of them. Would you say documenting topics such as eating disorders (See: ‘Thin’) is not serious enough endevour?

See weather report… Feb 22 by David Alan Harvey.

http://davidalanharvey.typepad.com/road_trip/

could explain some coming problems.

Yes Eugene Richards was a Magnum member.

VII unfortunately has been in a downward spiral for a while. The more established, older photographers are semi-retired and living on past laurels from wars gone by. Now the agency is dependent on less established photographers to go to Iraq and elsewhere. The agency lives on a reputation from five years ago.

Dan

While I don’t really agree with your assessment of present day Vll your post did get me thinking about the sustainability of any number of
the current crop of ‘commando’ style,self-contained small agencies that only represent,or distribute, a handfull of photographers.

Generically,many seem to focus their attention on only a handful of topics (at least,only a handful that the typical mainstream media would be
interested in) and I wonder if their archives offer enough diversity of content to afford them any reasonable expectation of financial security.
By incorporating Network photographers,I get the impression that Vll is making a move to broadening their depth

It would be interesting to hear from some who have closer ties with individual photographers involved in such endeavors to find out if they
regard the future,in a small collective, as rosy or bleak,from a business perspective

Dan K – you said if you look at the photographers who are out there doing serious work in major publications right now, you’ll realize none of them are with VII.

‘Keeping this on a positive note – what agency or agencies are on an upward spiral? Which agency/agencies represent this serious work to which you’re referring?