The photographers who clamor outside fashion week tents and venues, snapping the street style of fashionable editors and bloggers, are tired of doing so without adequate compensation.
Street-style photographers can help a nobody become a somebody by legitimizing their style, photographing them alongside editors for major fashion magazines. And once a blogger or Youtuber or famous-actor spawn-slash-DJ becomes known for their style, they often use those pictures on their blogs or Instagrams—which can lead to lucrative deals with brands.
The photographers who help catapult these randos to fame believe they’re being used when these influencers or multi-million dollar brands use their photos without paying for the rights. And some of these photographers, according to photographer Adam Katz Sinding of Le 21ème, spend thousands of dollars to cover shows, just in hopes of landing a paid job out of it.
“This cause is rooted in asking for more respect,” French photographer Nabile Quenum told the Times. “We want people to respect the work we do and recognize that this is our livelihood. We, too, are trying to make a living, and many of us are struggling.”
All across the fashion world, different areas of labor are beginning to organize, officially or unofficially. The Model Alliance, a labor organization established in 2012, provides education and advocacy for fashion models. Last year retail workers at Zara voted to unionize and back in 2013 after a building collapse killed 1,100 Bangladeshi garment workers the government decided to commit to a sustainability compact with the European Union, but there are still huge problems with factories unionizing there. And in an industry where people across magazines and fashion labels are often underpaid, illegally employed, and have their work used for profit for free, widespread unions are a long time coming.
