The Intern’s Tale
The flap about James Nachtwey’s studio soliciting unpaid interns has already bounced all over the internet, even showing up on Gawker before settling to the floor to be forgotten until the next spontaneous outcry for interns rights. So it’s not exactly something we at Meridian are keen to regurgitate. That said, I couldn’t help but use the case to point out what to look for and what to avoid when it comes to photography internships – particularly unpaid ones.
The big draw of unpaid internships is experience – an internship with someone eminent in the field like Nachtwey would potentially elevate your skill set so that perhaps your jobs in the future will pay more. Another appeal is the networking potential – simply being in the right environment can lead to more numerous fruitful interactions. In any case the goal of an internship is usually a delayed reward, be it money or self-satisfaction.
On the other hand, mo’ money is better than no money. Aside from Nachtwey getting blasted for being all sorts of bad things I know he isn’t (DISCLAIMER: I have accepted J.N. as my personal Lord and Savior), comments on the original post on Jamie’s List and elsewhere such as the DuckRabbit blog pointed out that unpaid internships exclude potential applicants from the poorer end of the economic spectrum. Despite blogosphere testimony from photographers like Christopher Morris and David Burnett who extolled the benefits of working for free early in their careers, the unpaid intern does not occur in a vacuum. Meaning, even if it works out great for the intern, potentially there are plenty of other talented people who can’t afford to get a leg up by working for free for a while.
Basically, no one in any of the dozens of comments about this incident disagreed with the idea that getting paid is ideal. Unpaid internships are at best a compromise of cost versus opportunity, and at worst are the symptom of an imperfect industry where even the eminent professionals can’t afford to pay their interns. Since some people are completely averse to the idea of unpaid internships, you might benefit from listening closely to the people who might take or have taken a similar internship.
If you’re starting to consider an unpaid internship, keep some things in mind. First, make sure there is something legitimate being returned for your services. I saw an ad on Craigslist recently for an unpaid photography ‘intern’ that was supposed to produce photos for a “rapidly growing” surf company. Red flag number one: a photography internship in the retail industry. If your skill level as an intern exceeds that of your employers, you’re getting screwed. On the other hand, if you’ve talked with your potential employer and its obvious there’s a career’s worth of expertise to be tapped into, maybe you’ve got a keeper.
I am in fact expecting to start an unpaid internship next month. To my benefit I’ll have the extra time in my schedule anyway, and I live extremely frugally to boot. To assuage any lingering guilt over buying into a system that doesn’t always pay, I plan to blog the hell out of anything I learn, so that if some photographer is too busy flipping burgers to pay for gear they might still warm their hands on my fire every now and then. It’s a fairly limp conciliation, but at least it’s something. I’m optimistic.
On the slightly bright side, consider that colleges, workshops and graduate schools usually make you pay them.
