Contempt for photographers is institutionalized in music

Oasis requires photographers to waive the rights to their photos annually. Gracie Abrams at Cruïlla won't let professionals take her picture. Al Primavera, Charlie XCX, and Sabrina Carpenter also had them banned: if you wanted a photo, it had to be supplied by their team. Guns N' Roses? Same. The Offspring, despite coming from punk backgrounds, contractually demanded that they only be photographed in full-length, lest any wrinkles be seen. As if Iggy Pop wasn't still doing the magnificent iguana on stage at almost eighty years old and with more skin folds than a raisin. Robbie Williams makes them sign a contract according to which they automatically transfer the photographs they take of his concerts for a pound: if he likes an image for merchandising, it's his for that insulting compensation. Ben Harper goes further and also contractually requires them to be released for free. Furthermore, their manager must approve them before publishing them.

All this professional disdain has been firmly in place for about five years. There have been protests and protests, but the concert business has become a perverse machine, with tickets auctioned at outrageous prices and a control over artists' images that is a form of censorship directly derived from a way of understanding music according to turbo-capitalist logic. Since the media, however, want to serve readers, in most cases they just jump the gun. But perhaps a dialogue with the industry should be considered, based on a respect that is no longer observed. Photographers have created the iconography of rock for decades, an essential part of it all, and now they are disdained and censored like this. Perhapsit's only rock and roll, What the Stones sang.And don't like it.