Helping hand
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
About a year ago a dear friend, Tineke van Brederode, introduced me to a friend of her, who was working on a calendar for the Dutch Lepra Stichting. For the calendar she needed 365 photo’s or illustrations of hands.
She asked if I wanted to make a variation on the hand that Jonathan Safran Four had made for the cover of his book ”Extremely loud and incredibly close”. I had to use a text about AIDS. The I was not getting paid for the job, I would only get five copies of the calendar. But I don’t get asked very often to do these things, so I said yes. I made this:
After a while I got a mail that said that my work would not be used. I was pissed and didn’t react. And there the story ended, because the woman never contacted me again either.
This weekend Tineke gave me a two copies of the five calendars that she had received, because two of her photo’s were used in the calendar. I no longer as pissed as I was a few months ago, but the feeling isn’t gone. To ask somebody (eh, me) to make something, with rather strict orders (imitation of Safran’s hand, a given text about AIDS, and even a short deadline) without paying a cent for it, and then saying that you are not going to use it, is ridiculous. And what bothers me just as most, is that the women did no effort at all to explain it. Of course, it is only my ego that is hurt, but hey, I have a big ego, and so does the woman who asked me to do this job, so what are we going to do about it? I have no idea yet, but for me this case is not closed yet.
Since I don’t need two copies of the calendar, one is for give-away to the first who asks for it. It is a beautiful collection of 365 pictures and illustrations of hands. You do have to pay the postage, which will be a few euro’s.
Here is a song from a CD for which Tineke made the cover photo.
It is the CD ”Hamana namun” by djembé master Famoudou Konate, and the song is called ”Soliwulen”:
You can get the CD here.
Milan
2008-11-28 06:36:01
What a story. I hate that kind of behavior.