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Of Photography and Trash cans

So what happens, you may ask, to a collection purchased by Corbis ? Well, you might not ask that question because you don’t care, but that is another story.

We have a clue:

1997 : Corbis purchases LGI, a celebrity photo agency, for a undisclosed amount of money . Immediately moves collection of one million color slides and black and white prints to what was then the world HQ of the Bettmann Archives on Broadway.

1998 : Exactly one year later, the director of the archive, looking bored, declares the LGI archive officially scanned. Obviously not everything was scanned, only what a bunch of Bettmann Archive trained editors considered worthy. What was not scanned of Lynn Goldsmith images, who sold her images outright, was destroyed, via a pair of scissors and a trash can. Remember, this was photo editor trained in historical images that were asked to assess the value of current celebrity images at a time when Corbis’s only interest was in commercial stock photography and not editorial.

2010 : Flea Market. Lower East Side. Manhattan:

.

LGI slides

This is a set of 4 color slides sheet of Kool and The Gang portraits, taken by “Susan Phillips” in 1992, clearly stamped LGI. Detail here:

Detail slides

The photographer, “Susan Phillips”, if my memory serves me well, was an alias name ( one many) for a famous Rock photographer.

O, and by the way, the person selling those slides was a very gentle old man who had no clue and couldn’t remember ( or didn’t want to say) where he took possession of those slides.

Sure, the photographer might have taken back possession of her images and decided to dump them. That is highly doubtful :  Photographers, even if they change careers, tend to be extremely possessive about their images, even bad ones. Those are decent portrait images of Kool and the Gang and would have some value in the licensing market.

She might have given some to the little old man to sell, out of pity.  A $20 bill would have worked much better.

Corbis tried to disposed of them in a trash can as they were recently moving offices from 902 Broadway to Hudson Street..Now you are starting to make sense. Question is, what else was in that trash ?

This entry was posted on August 30, 2010 at 8:37 am and is filed under commercial stock, Corpocrates, celebrity, license, editorial, Search, corbis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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11 Responses to “Of Photography and Trash cans”

  1. dearmasa says:
    August 30, 2010 at 9:45 pm

    I gotta ask… how did you come by this information and what can those whose images are “missing” do about keeping vigil on trash cans near Corbis’ offices??? I just want to throw up…

    Do people get it NOW?

    Adrienne Usher

  2. pmelcher says:
    August 31, 2010 at 7:07 am

    Adrienne,

    I just stumbled upon those images in a flea market this week end. As far as trash can, it is just an assumption of mine, based on elimination logic:
    - No one would bother entering Corbis offices and steal 4 slide sheets of 80’s Kool and the Gang pictures.
    - The Photographer would have not thrown these images out herself and if she had, she would have physically destroyed them.
    - The photographer would have not donated 4 slides sheets to this man. He would have proudly said so.

    How else do you explain how these images ended up on the streets of New York in the hands of an unlicensed vendor?

    SH

  3. Linda Matlow says:
    September 1, 2010 at 3:34 pm

    Someone obviously dumpster dived and found them…Perhaps the man selling has friends or family that do it for him so he can sell on weekends. I’m sure he had no idea either…

    Sad and scary…

    I had worked for a photo agency in the late 1970s that was being sold and photographers that they could not reach….they threw out tens of thousands of original medium format slides…And those works were so incredibly beautiful..I’m sure a few of the photogs were on extended assignments in far off locations..This was before email,cellphones and answering machines..(I’m sure someone will say,’What’s an answering machine ??”)

    Oh,after 31 years in this photography and stock photo business I have so many stories…

    Here’s my random thought of the day…I will be putting my archive of 44,000 original images in a “Collection” on ebay later today..Serious!

    Anyone interested can go to my website and email me

    Linda Matlow
    http://pixintl.com

  4. laurie says:
    September 3, 2010 at 1:43 pm

    Susan Phillips was an LGI employee back in the 80’s. We used to shoot shows together in NYC fairly often. We were friends but I don’t know what became of her.

    I’m sure the material I had at StarFile Photo Agency met the same trashcan fate following Virginia’s Lohle’s death and subsequent closing of the office. No one in the office lifted a finger to get in touch with some of us nor return any of our material.

    Laurie Paladino
    www.lauriepaladinophotography.com

  5. pmelcher says:
    September 3, 2010 at 1:47 pm

    Thank you for this Laurie.. Actually a few employees at Starfile tried desperately to do something after Virginia passed aways. Unfortunately they didn’t have the ressource to handle it properly and had to abandon it.
    Indeed a sad story

  6. Linda Matlow says:
    September 3, 2010 at 2:56 pm

    I too had some original material at Starfile agency in the early 1980s and never received it back. I’ve always had a wesbite,a listed telephone number,email,in all the photo source books and websites,24 hour answer service and no one from STARFILE respected my request to have material returned in the 1980s or make any attempt to reach me after Virginia passed away.However I did notice that there was a company that had an auction of ‘collectibles’ which included at least one of my images of KISS and that was definitely one I had sent to Starfile..
    I had heard the archive “remains” was sold to someone ???
    If so,I do want any of my remainders back!

    Linda Matlow
    http://pixintl.com

    Yes,my photo archive is for sale and the MUSIC(only the music at this time) is for sale on EBAY.
    My ebay ID: livelovelaugh213

    direct URL:
    http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130427705890&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT#ht_1826wt_1139

  7. thereallynn says:
    September 12, 2010 at 10:28 am

    I would not get on this blog except that I want to make it clear there are a number of errors in Paul’s post. The most glaring one is that he is claiming I am Susan Phillips. Susan is a real person. You can see her assisting me in this video clip: http://www.rockandrollphotogallery.com/pages/movies/sting.html
    She has big glasses. She also shot photos which LGI syndicated. If they were found in the trash maybe Susan threw them out. I might not totally trust Corbis but I know I sure do not trust Paul Melcher to be my photo news source.
    lynn goldsmith

  8. pmelcher says:
    September 12, 2010 at 1:39 pm

    ya, and I wouldn’t trust Lynn Goldsmith to take a portrait of me unless if I wanted it to end up in a trash can.

    BTW, there was more than just one photographer’s name on these slides..

  9. laurie says:
    September 15, 2010 at 9:48 pm

    As far as StarFile, I don’t know how hard they tried. They had my contact info. Ginny and I had been friends once. I’m sorry she suffered. Just getting a check out of StarFile when I would find sales online was nearly impossible for me. Today I happened to find not only one of my old photos on alamy.com credited to Pictorial Press, I also went to their site and found another one of my images credited to PP — NOT TO ME…

    They told me they’d gotten the images from Virginia when they repped StarFile and apparently felt they could just credit them to their own agency and not report sales to photographers. I have to go through their site and see what else of mine is up there uncredited. I did e mail them but haven’t gotten a response to my inquiries as to why MY work is credited to them and how they planned to pay for any sales made following the end of StarFile.

  10. Linda Matlow says:
    September 16, 2010 at 12:36 pm

    I noticed all of the images on Pictorial Parade are credited to the agency and not the photographer. If I have time when winter is in full swing I’ll check the site out to see if any of my STARFILE photos are there. I know back in the 80s not everyone sent dupes to agencies when they had a hot photo that had to be sent out same day by Fed Ex…So how would many photogs even be able to prove the images are theirs ?
    Sad situation for the freelance worker bees that trusted some of those long gone agencies.
    Linda Matlow
    http://pixintl.com

  11. charlyn says:
    October 16, 2010 at 11:24 am

    I remember Susan Phillips too, definitely not an alias.
    I’m curious about the pile of bw contacts, was there any information/credit on the back?

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