I think photography is being recognized and collected. Its values have certainly gone up and continue to go up.
People of my generation who became photographers in the late fifties, early sixties, there were no rewards in photography. There were no museum shows. Maybe MOMA would show something, or Chicago. There were no galleries. Nobody bought photographs.
Stock photos are used everywhere on the Net. Chances are, the website you are on right now uses stock photos somewhere - maybe as the featured image of the blog post. This also means that there will always be a large market for stock photographers.
Steichen bought my first photographs that I ever sold. He recognized the style from the school of Black Mountain. After that, it was about twenty years before I sold another photograph.
It's more difficult now, to be a Geographic photographer, than it was when I came along. And it wasn't easy at that time.
There are those photographers who have made a whole career doing commercial work but have never had a museum show, and then there are others who've only had museum shows but couldn't survive for five seconds in the real world of photography. But I've done absolutely everything.
There are 65 to 70 photography galleries in New York alone. In the U.K., there are no more than five, and they're all in London.
Photographers never want to talk about the fact that they may well be in decline. It's the greatest taboo subject of all.
