by Melanie Lennon
Photo credit: Paramore's Hayley Williams at Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, 2018. Photo credit: Maggie Friedman's Instagram.
The music industry has taken a huge hit during COVID-19. From cancelled tours to delayed album releases, many people have been impacted. However, an area within the industry that’s struggling the most is the crew members and photographers.
I spoke with Maggie Friedman, a 23-year-old music photographer from New York, about the hardships she’s facing during this pandemic.
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How did you feel when you heard about the pandemic?
My initial reaction was just kind of like, shock and confusion. And it was also like, how am I going to make money because like, I worked really hard to have this be my full-time job and now, I can't work. It's not even about money that much. I mean, it's about money because I have bills to pay but it's about like, I love my job. So, working is like my personality. I love to work. So, not being able to work, not having a project, drives me nuts. I always want to be working towards something. So just, it's just been finding projects and trying to use my time in a productive way. But also like, I think it's okay to not be productive at all. Like, I think we shouldn't be forcing anyone to be productive because no one handles this kind of situation the same way. We shouldn't be telling anyone how to deal with this kind of situation, because it's unprecedented.
This time of the year is probably very busy for you – how has this changed?
Festival season is like, the time of the year I make the most money. Just being candid. And a lot of photographers who, you know, again, I'm lucky enough that I do this full-time and I make money. But when you get to that point, festival season is like big bucks because, especially if you're working for a label and they're paying you to shoot all their artists, or if you're working for an artist, it's an opportunity to work for different artists every single day. You can do all this portrait stuff, you can have a big publication pay you because they need coverage of the festival and if you're in with that publication, they'll pay you to do it. I mean, besides festival season, you know, right now would have been like, spring tours season. Like April, May is busy for spring tours. My May would have been very booked.
How have you been able to earn an income during this time?
Unemployment here has been a fun journey. I mean fun in the most sarcastic way you could possibly say fun…I think I applied the end of March, it took about a month for them to finally get back to me and send me money. However, they are retroactively sending me money. So they're sending me payments for those weeks that they messed up and didn't send me money. So, I'm not complaining. I'm grateful to be receiving money, I'm glad that finally got to me. And I think that they really need to get to the people who really need it. Because there are plenty of people who need the money, probably more than me, that still have not gotten through to them…I really pushed [my] prints at first because I didn't know I'd get unemployment, none of that existed. So, I was like, I need money, I'm going to be screwed. I was at the point where I was down to not very much money, you know? And people really did support it and didn't question the prices and really paid what the prices were. And I sold a lot of them and I'm really proud and lucky that people wanted to do that. But at the same time, now that I'm actually receiving money, I don't feel fair pushing them on people and making people pay for them.
Have you been able to find any positives in this situation?
I think the one positive is that we're all experiencing this at the same time. So, like, no one is immune. It doesn't matter how successful you are – you're not immune to this. Every person in the world is affected by this right now. And everyone in the music industry, you can be touring with the biggest artists in the world, they're not touring. So, no one is making money. We're all filing for unemployment…It’s put everyone kind of on an even playing field. And let us focus on just supporting each other and buying each other's prints and building community in any way that we can during this time and maybe filter out some of the pettiness and the competition, which I think is good. So when we come back from this, it'll be just about the work and less about the drama.
What do you think concerts will look like when this is over?
I don't know, like, I wish I knew. But there could be so many different ways this plays out. I think we're at a point of certainty of knowing that like, if concerts come back this year, it'll be small shows and I don't know what the scale will be. But no artists really want to put anyone at risk by touring any kind of way. So, it's logical that it won't be till next year…I don't know about you, but I definitely don't want to be at concerts unless I know there’s no risk at all. Like, I don't want to be in a situation where I'm taking a risk in order to enjoy live music…It's going to create a new normal when it comes to concerts because I don't know how we're going to do any of this. I mean, they might have to like, do capacity limits and force people to stand distancing. But like, what's the point? Like, who wants to go to a concert when that's the reality, right? What's fun about that, you know? Half the fun is being pressed up against strangers you don't know and sweating on people.
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