Greg Broome’s delicious plate of food. It looks like cheese from here.
As interesting as seeing how photographs for advertisements were made in addition to photographing moldy food, I was really interested more in how Greg Broome survives as an artist. In my lifetime, I’ve always heard that being an artist meant not earning money, not having a sustainable lifestyle, and always living on the edge. Greg Broome voiced almost similar situations; the key difference is that he seems successful at what he is doing. He mentions how there would be days or even weeks where he would be “technically unemployed”, meaning his agency was unable to find a project for him.
What does he do in his spare time? We saw a little bit of what he does during his moldy food project, but how does he come up with these ideas? It’s almost even appalling to imagine how he maintains his lifestyle during the “drought” of unemployment. Greg goes on to talk about the total opposite side of this lifestyle; the projects where he has to finish it only in a few days. It’s like living a schizophrenic lifestyle. One day you might be working on a private project that you’ve really wanted to do, the next day you’re staring down a huge project given by a rather large company with limited time and resources to do.
It can be quite disheartening to live such an erratic lifestyle, but I’ve seen and known people who persevere through such times. Can you imagine how it would be like to live such a lifestyle?
After seeing the Irving Penn exhibition at one of the Pace galleries, its easier to understand Broome’s point about Penn’s influence on his still life photography as well as Penn’s influence on photography in general. Do you remember Penn’s “Ripe Cheese” photograph? Can you see Penn’s influence on Broome?
When we were at the Highline, we got the added bonus of meeting that art director who once worked with Penn at Cosmo magazine. Again it helps reinforce the notion that there was a time when artist-photographers could profitably support themselves.
There are many artists who make a good living on what we call a freelance basis; this route to making money is, in some ways, better than earlier generations–artists like Pablo Picasso and Edouard Manet lived off the generosity of patrons for a good part of their professional lives.
I’ve never connected the “Ripe Cheese” photo with what Greg Broome’s doing. I guess artists draw inspiration from each other.
While I’ve heard many stories of artists being strapped for cash, I’m actually more interested in how they occupy their time. Thinking of personal projects to do until the next job would certainly drive me crazy. I would run out of ideas and resort to the consummation of boredom.