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Wednesday, February 9, 2022

God Damn It

If his social media is any indication, Jörg Colberg is financially against the wall. I disagree with him about everything, but this should not be taken as an indication that he's actually wrong as such. It certainly doesn't mean he's not doing anything of value. He tackles interesting questions from time to time, with tools that I consider inadequate, but again that's my opinion.

He personally dislikes me, which would make any attempt from me to support him at least embarassing. Also, I have no need for any of the several things he offers, so anything I did for him would be purely charity and my charitable giving is very structured and does not include writers that dislike me.

Nevertheless, he offers consulting services of various kinds at ludicrously low prices. He has a book and perhaps some prints you can buy. He has a Patreon.

Some of you may reasonably find genuine value in some or all of this. We're still friends if you do. If you've been thinking about it but not committing, I think now might be the time.

Colberg's Patreon: here
Consulting: here
You can contact him directly to buy shit or whatever: jmcolberg (at) gmail.com

Honestly, I am tense and irritated now. I don't want to be panhandling for this fucking guy, but I cannot in good conscience let him starve without at least making a slight effort.

9 comments:

  1. Yeah he just turned down a paying gig for reasons, and bragged about doing that on Twitter so ...

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    1. Well, yeah. I believe he's in pretty dire straits, though, even if he is still a rather fancy boy.

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    2. Passive-aggressive depressive. Been there, done that, got my ass kicked. Day job beckons?

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  2. If you didn't link his Patreon, one would hardly know he even has one - haven't found the link anywhere else. Are people just supposed to google it?

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    1. He's legit shitty at the hustle, and I honestly don't know whether to respect him more, or less, on those grounds.

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  3. I feel sympathy for anyone in financial distress. But it seems ironic to leave a good paying gig to pursue blog-writing, and then complain later about working for free. I wrote a blog for many years, and yes they can consume a lot of time. But money? Not so much. Hosted on blogspot or similar, the overhead is basically zero. Just mental energy spent. Yada yada yada, the great wheel spins, and many many people devote hours to photography or writing about photography or book reviews or whatever, hopefully because they enjoy it. Payment is great too! But it does not fit well into the current model, and everyone who blogs knows that. Whining seems counterproductive. I am guessing Joeg gets a fair amount of free review copies sent his way (could be wrong, just a guess), so turning those over on eBay might generate some cash flow?

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    1. In all fairness, I do not think he "left" a gig, his contract was not renewed. The program he was teaching at most recently seems to have severely downsized. I vaguely recall, at any rate, that they had a whole grid of "staff" on their web page (6? 8?) and they were down to 2 staff when I looked a while back.

      I think academic photography is radically shrinking along with the rest of photography. Not sure what the situation is with Fine Art Degrees in general, although that might be shrinking as well, which would rather be a double-whammy for Photograph MFAs programs.

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  4. You gotta wonder what patrons think they're buying. Blessing | favourable review | name drop? Thing is, if you can't figure this stuff (bookmaking, editing and whatnot) out by yourself, you probably need to move on to some other pasttime to which your innate abilities are better suited. Rocket science it ain't. The reviews are 99% meaningless shite, gobbledygook, and thinly-veiled swipes at society. Interesting only insofar as it's a kind of circular intellectual pathology

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    1. My current approach to reading cphmag is to try to identify anywhere he actually talks about the photos in the book.

      Hint: almost never. Colberg is much more interested in talking about the artist, the process, other artists, and as you note, society. Sometimes he'll devote a bunch of words to the physical properties of the book.

      Which, I guess that's a thing, but it's not really a photobook review if you ignore the photos. And honestly it's pretty dull.

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