Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/02/24
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> It's the situation; the hobby syndrome. > Its a hard thing to being a professional in a field that is everyones > favorite hobby. Curt Flood stated this very strongly in an interview about the free agency system in baseball which his actions helped bring about. From memory: he said that it was hard to convince ordinary people who would give up their firstborn in order to be able to play professional baseball that ballplayers are professionals who deserve to negotiate for their pay just like everyone else. I'm sure students of baseball history can explain this better than me, but he was complaining about the Reserve Clause in effect at the time he was a player. So the hobby syndrome is certainly not limited to photography. It applies to the arts in general. And on something of a tangent, perhaps it has to do a bit with the mindset that the arts are an optional part of our culture -- notice how art education can be dropped from a school curriculum, for example, or notice with what fervor the NEA system was criticized in Washington (oh dear, remember the fuss about Mapplethorpe?)... Byron.