[johnmflores]

"In interviews with more than 50 people, in a CJR investigation spanning more than five months, photojournalists described behavior from editors and colleagues that ranged from assault to unwanted advances to comments on their appearance or bodies when they were trying to work. And now, as the #MeToo moment has prompted change across a range of industries—from Hollywood to broadcasting to the arts—photojournalists are calling for their own moment of reckoning.

Women interviewed by CJR say two well-known photographers—Antonin Kratochvil and Christian Rodriguez—engaged in serial harassment and that VII, a prestigious collective, and the Eddie Adams Workshop ignored complaints of harassment."

CJR Special Report: Photojournalism?s moment of reckoning - Columbia Journalism Review

[Digitalis]

This has been a long time coming - there are problems everywhere - not just in the US. I won't name names, but there are Photographers, Editors/Directors, Publications, Talent agencies/Modeling agencies here in Australia that engage in some alarming practices. There have also been people within the industry that have been calling for increased accountability. Suffice to say if any of my children were planning of working in the industry: there would be some hard and fast rules about which agencies they get involved with.


My personal thoughts RE: Harvey Weinstein - [and the #metoo movement in general] I generally agree with what Pamela Anderson* had to say about the controversy, Pamela [in a nutshell] said: "when a man wearing only a bathrobe answers the door in a hotel room for an "audition" something is clearly rotten in the state of Denmark." There are certain standards for professional conduct - when these are not upheld then it should be immediately obvious to all involved that not everything is above the table. People should be looking to their peers and mentors about professionalism - and if they find themselves in a situation that visibly falls outside of that, they should be prepared to either walk away or voice their concerns and have the support to be able to speak out and take control of the situation.


* the words she actually used were : “I learned never to put myself in those situations again. When I came to Hollywood, of course, I had a lot of offers to do private auditions and things that make absolutely no sense. Just common sense. “Don’t go into a hotel room alone. If someone answers a door in a bathrobe, leave. Things that are common sense. But I know Hollywood is very seductive and people want to be famous and sometimes you think you’re going to be safe with an adult in the room.”

[Rondec]

I think unfortunately too many people think that the way things have "always been" is the way that they always will be. I saw a news story where Harvey Weinstein's lawyer said that Harvey didn't "invent the casting couch," as though that excused his despicable behavior. All too often someone with a little talent ends up getting power over others and lets that power corrupt them. Or maybe they were always that way from the very beginning. Regardless, we can and must do better. There will probably always be bad people who get into positions of power, but they should be identified and forced to pay the consequences for their behavior.