“If there is one, constant factor in life, that constant is factor: Change!”. This quote illustrates one thing I’ve learned from an Infantry Officer many, many decades ago. For the past ten, fifteen years or so, I heard colleagues complain about declining prices, increasing image theft and infringements, increased competition of amateurs, agencies not reporting  royalties, sales, besides many other “glitches”, affecting income of Visual StoryTellers, PhotoJournalists & Documentary Photographers. Recently, this “culture of complaining” is caused by anew  couple of reasons. Artificial Intelligence and Computer Techniques, the Reign of His Majesty, Mr. Trump, they are badly shaking and stirring things up. Jet another “Round of Change”, on top of the previous one? Or another nail to shut a box.

Today I read a Social Media Post of a very well respected colleague, Documentary Photographer, who has her focus on the People on the African Continent. She has been traveling there for years, making beautiful Human Interest Stories, publishes, is an example for many. She quoted another colleague, a World Press Award Winner, who is stopping his professional photography career. Not because he doesn’t see stories any longer, doesn’t stop because he don’t like his work any longer, doesn’t stop because he does not wants to win jet another, prestigious price for his work. He stops, because it’s no longer financially sustainable. My colleague concurs his observations, and continues that for the outside world everything looks like the perfect, glamorous life, with a near to perfect professions, travel, publications, and so on, and so on. “Behind the scenes, it’s survival. Rates are endlessly negotiated. Clients ask if it can be done for less or worse: exposure only.” 

It’s rare, I read these kind of Social Media Posts. As another couple of colleagues explained it to me: “It’s a Culture of Fear”. Fear for losing assignors, who don’t want to be associated with complaining freelancers. Fear for losing contracts with photo-agencies who value their reputation above fair payments for photography. Fear for Publishers who established Monopolies within the Publishing Industry; causing them to totally dictate terms, pricing and acces to their publication channels. And, monopolies risk PhotoJournalist being banned all together, by agencies and assignors, if they try to negotiate better conditions. And therefor acces to a decent income. Especially in The Netherlands & Belgium these monopolies have been established since 2018.

“As if passion were a form of payment! As if experience had no value!”

Perhaps this is the moment, to shed this fear far from us, and give another bit of an insight in how media works today. I mentioned photo-agencies, as part of the problem. They distribute visual content to publishers, like magazines, newspapers and websites, they are one source of income for visual content creators, often the main source of income. However, very often they are also kindred victims, alongside many other photo-journalists and documentary photographers, who work with them to distribute their work. Also victims of an industry in decline; like my colleague above; like the World Press Winner she quoted; and like many others I regularly talk to. If these agencies pay less and less royalties towards their contributors, they also receive way, way less on these royalties themselves! Often their share is about 50/50 or 60/40 of gross sales prices, after re-distributors deduced their percentages. Increased monopolies, endless negotiations, outright blackmail, constantly occurring infringements and fails to report sales and many more ‘strategies to minimize publishers cost, are fired upon them as well. Still one would expect, they have a more solid answer to this, since they do have management, and they are represented by a lobby organisation advocating their interest, called: Cepic. It feels like a jail, trapped in for life, causing an entire industry of freelancers to disappear.

Infringements of CopyRight are “Fashionable! Right?

Besides photo-agencies, who forward not sustainable royalties, image theft or outright infringements are increasingly ‘fashionable’. Everybody has nowadays a website or at least a social media profile, has some kind of a a story or advertisement to share, finds an image in some obscure corner of the internet, and copy pastes it into a page. Copyright Legislation is often unknown, if there even is a sense of copyright at all. If an infringement is handled by a court, after sometimes months of painstaking ‘negotiations’ and legal forms of intimidations, courts, especially in The Netherlands, often award the minimum possible, meanwhile leaving representing lawyers with the majority of settlements, since they charge per hour. Not for profit organisations ask professional photographers to work for free, since they forgot to mention photography in their budget applications toward funders. Even advertising agencies (who should know better) re-distribute one time licensed photography multiple times towards various customers for reasons of ‘service’. Or extra profits for themselves, take your pick. And this is not the end of a long list of historical and recent threats towards professional photography, photo-journalism and documentary storytelling. Just a few, minor examples, very well known to most of us. It takes away most of our motivation to keep working, our motivation to engage in sometimes outright dangerous situations. And our motivation to tell stories that matter most to the world and to you, on which the world and you can base important decisions of life.

PhotoJournalism has a Price!

Visual StoryTelling, or PhotoJournalism, Documentary Photography and many other storytelling techniques in media, mainstream or not, are aimed at providing The People of complete, accurate and truthful information, on which they can base their life’s decisions. And with: “The People”, I do not necessarily mean just the man or woman in the street. Media, and the stories they publish, are also used by politicians who respond on stories, turning them into legislation that affects most of us, including you. It’s used by ceo’s of the cooperations, who use the media to hire new people, or fire many, including you. Or, if things go sour and ‘alternative motivations’ surface,  the media are used to manipulate The People to elect the wrong politicians in office based on the wrong information. That is called propaganda, or Fake News, and we all know where that comes from. Recently numerous situations occurred, including one during Presidential Elections in South-East Europe. This is allowed to happen, when freelance (photo)journalists are not being compensated enough to do their sometimes dangerous work and publish their stories. 

Let’s Do Something About It!!

Visual StoryTelling in all its forms, have a crucial role in both democracy and economy, and without it, both will perish. Perhaps it already did, I don’t know. However, if we want to maintain something that resembles democracy and an independent way of life, free of interference by billionaires, racist, autocratic, right wing politicians, and without it’s creators living on welfare, be need to do something! Journalism, and especially  PhotoJournalism have a Price! And so does the work of Documentary Photographers, PhotoJournalists and Visual StoryTellers. Nobody is taking the initiative on our behalf. So, shouldn’t we, Visual Professionals, Agencies and Publishers come together somehow, and Discus strategies on how we can deal with this Existential Crisis? Now Please!!!

By: Hubertus Huijg. New York, February 14, 2026.

Any Questions or Comments? Please send me an E-mail Here.