I am a professional model. When I tell people this, the eyes-rolls I sometimes get in response reflect a common thought How is that a job?
Art is a career because there is a market.
Why a professional model and not just a hobbyist?
You probably know the saying “go big or go home”. As you dive deeper and deeper into an activity you are passionate about, it starts taking an increasing amount of your time and investment. If I had to maintain another job alongside, that job would suffer from my modeling activity, and would probably have to pay for it too. So, modeling is a full-time job just because it requires a full-time investment.
Rarely do I have the opportunity to break down what going big entails as a professional model, so here it is. As a freelancer, I work 40 to 80 hours a week, depending on if I am at home preparing for a tour or if I am already on a tour:
- 15-20 % of that time is spent on actual shoots, in front of a camera.
- 35 to 45 % of my time is dedicated to the legwork of travel planning (including booking flights/trains/buses, accommodation, visa, and travel insurance), market research, responding to emails, negotiations, and background checks (on photographers) to ensure my safety. Planning a tour can be anywhere from 20h to 100h of work depending on how long the trip is, how many cities I travel to and how many people I coordinate with.
- When it comes to travel, 10 to 15 % of my time is spent on transportation, literally sitting or riding from point A to point B, making it difficult to reduce the time on administrative routines due to improper or unreliable internet access, sometimes giving me a headache from too much motion and screentime and/or lack of space to unfold a laptop.
- The remaining of my time is spent on development – I stay sharp and up-to-date on current art trends and past work by visiting as many museums, galleries, and exhibitions as possible wherever I travel, staying fit and flexible by running/working out/doing yoga- and portfolio updates – website maintenance, and social media.
Every shoot begins with 45 minutes to one hour and a half of hair and make-up, which is touched up roughly every two hours during shooting, or when I squeeze in a bit to eat or drink. One full make-up costs around 15 € in beauty products for every shoot, not counting any makeup retouching and the daily skin, hair, and nail care. So, by the time the photographer and I are ready to work, I have already accrued two billable hours, at least 15 € in make-up and transportation fees.
Photographers cannot work from their imagination only, they need at least a subject to photograph. Oftentimes, they do not always know exactly what they want either, so I fill in as an art director and provide ideas to create a story and adjust the setup. I am not short on crazy ideas and that is a part I enjoy very much.
More and more, as I gained experience and knowledge of photography over the years – as an art director – I am able to work with novice photographers and provide lighting and composition advice. My insight into photography also helps shape my body and face while retaining my natural complexion. It all goes toward communicating a certain feeling, mood, or concept.
For shootings, I maintain a mix of eclectic and classic wardrobe that I update regularly with designer clothes as well as thrift store findings; and I regularly alter the clothes myself for fitting or embellish them with trimmings.
This is, in a nutshell, the added value you get when you hire a professional model to create your pictures. I am not only a model, a person posing for the camera: I am also an advisor, a secretary, an art director, a manager, a logistician, a make-up artist, and a stylist. I provide make-up, hair, and clothing, ideas, and create opportunities by traveling the world to meet artists.
I get to make art every day by collaborating with inspired and skilled artists wherever I go. That is the glamorous part of my work, and it is really what makes everything else worth it 🙂 .
In fact, I regard photographers as my clients, to which in deciding to work with them, I take financial risks by advancing treasury (flights and hosting are usually paid ahead of the booking deposits I ask) and I have to make strategic decisions based on ROI (return on investment), to ensure a fair and balanced fee between them and myself. Not to mention personalized client requests and budget ties, offsetting last-minute cancellations & flaking, overcoming unreliable public transportation networks, or (oh, I don’t know) maintaining work during a world pandemic 😉 .
The other aspect of dealing with photographers as clients is billing them. The billable hours written on a receipt have to account for certain deductions; and clients do not always understand that up to 75 % of my fee accounts for social insurance, retirement, travel, and administrative time. I can only do so much to reduce this overhead. My rates are determined (calculated) on a case-by-case basis such that, after all expenses have been deduced from a bill, my actual net income may be at France’s minimum wage (not so glamorous anymore, heh?).
When one calls a plumber, an electrician, or a locksmith, there is an understanding that a trip charge may be applicable, in addition to any provided services. As a professional model, it is assumed my trip time is benevolence, no matter how far in the suburbs I need to get. As I have mentioned (above), public buses and subways rarely allow any work to be done effectively during commuting. It is just not sustainable to lose working hours while traveling and not ask for compensation, but diplomacy is not always enough to convey this message.
In the past, I have witnessed some people getting uncomfortable when I speak about the detailed matters of professional modeling, because art and passion somehow are not compatible with the business world, or vice versa; and mixing them is like pouring cold water into hot grease. So, I often suggest this relationship be looked at in a different way: business is what keeps the art going, by ensuring everyone gets enough income to stay healthy and to keep making art.
I never saw myself as a businesswoman. I studied art and sciences, fashion design, and then beauty. Never business and administration. As I have been leveling up in this area, having burned out from overworking and not being able to make an affordable living, I have come to this realization: work needs to pay for itself and for the worker to carry on.
This mindset is difficult to enforce in a lot of art fields, where unpaid work has become standard and companies have made it a practice to exploit creators without compensation – except for visibility – and no means to even pay for food. Sorry, but I cannot eat my photos or my visibility. Everyone keeps working for free while waiting for the big breakthrough that will pay back years of precariousness. This sick trend has gotten so bad that it now gives editors and clients the bullying power to bargain against paid work. The belief that true artists should be starving is a self-fulfilling prophecy verging on abuse.
The only solution is for artists to respect themselves and their craft. Enough so as to enforce a proper living for creatives. Just like fair trade did for the food industry, to which customers are now willing to pay a bit more for chocolate and coffee, knowing farmers will get a decent wage in return, the art world needs to galvanize and set a uniform standard of doing business and creating quality work which the general public won’t mind paying for. It is simply not acceptable that some work gets paid if you climbed high enough up the food chain, while others are used without compensation because online magazines and social media provide ”free” content (which, by the way, they are not, watch out for advertising and private data reselling).
Art is not “useful” or utilitarian. It does not cure cancer (or Covid-19), yet there are spectators to enjoy it, so it still fills a void or fulfills a need, one way or another, and that means it has a market. Let us face it, if artists got as little as 1 € per Instagram subscriber per year, most of them would have at least their basic needs covered. So that market needs to be schooled about what fair use and consumption of art imply because it is simply wrong that hundreds of thousands of subscribers all over the internet still produce so little income that many models have now to strip-tease on OnlyFans.com to make it through COVID times.
Special thank you to Aurélien Pierre and Kelly Johnson for corrections and collaborative writing.
Great article. Too many people trying to get a break by “working for exposure or free” that it devalues the industry for everyone except those media outlets at the very top. People need to see the value in what they do and that they are worth more than just exposure. But again.. the abundance of everything in a globalised and increasingly digital-creative market does make that a very hard to achieve. Exploring other income revenues has become the new marketing model of today. Hard times makes for hard choices and that sometimes means reevaluating what we once thought we might never have or want to do.
Hi Minh-ly,
Thank you for your message and your points are well made. As well made as they are, some of them are also rather surprising to me.
I guess I probably fall into the category of a person described in your second paragraph, although I would like to say that I have worked hard all of my life but have never enjoyed or purchased the art that I own, or the concerts, operas and art galleries that I have visited, for the purposes of social status!
Over the years, you have consistently delivered beautiful and thought provoking work, appreciated by many, and of course this is not easily achieved. The work that goes into the creative process, and which sits behind each photograph and each concept, is enormous, even if ithe time consuming tasks of administration and preparation are not fully appreciated by all. Such challenges exist for 90% of all micro and small, (even medium), size business enterprises.
I believe that your profession is famous, (infamous?), for high levels of unfairness or even abuse. If my understanding is correct, professional modelling per say is an unforgiving and at times harsh task-mistress, especially as a free-lancer and your email seems to support this view, even though you clearly love and are passionate about what you do.
I support your view that the time of appreciation is now here and should have been recognised many years ago. As a professional model, your “fully loaded” costs should not be challenged by any reasonable thinking person, (perhaps occasionally mode of travel etc. but no question that your costs should not be met), who, at the-end-of-the-day, must appreciate the success and value of their achievement, with you, as the model, central to that success.
Stephen
Hi Minh-ly,
What a magnificent piece of work you have written.
Over the years, (I have seen a lot, being 79) I found that work plus talent to accomplish it, is partially recognized (with a few exception) only by those that benefit from your work. They will, reluctantly, pay you the minimum fee that you can accept to do their work, thinking that it is way overpaid.
Do what we can, we can’t change people’s general opinion that art is wort nothing unless your highly recongized by the Cream of Society. (And, please, don’t ask me how to get there…….!)
So courage and perseverance, but don’t forget “PLAN B” even if you think you don’t need it. It may save your future life.
I will share your post
Your fan,
Pierre Doré
Quite fantastic words on so many levels. You have written with great eloquence. One I can fully understand and totally support you on. Bravo for taking the time to write this piece. Very powerful.
Thank you for taking us behind the scenes about how much work that you do. People take for granted what they don’t know about. Thank you for sharing…..